What's for supper? Pasta night

Tonight's dinner menu:

Salad from the garden

Rigatoni with a sauce made from ground chicken, peppers, leftover diced tomatoes, a little can of pizza sauce, and extra seasonings.

What's for supper? Invented casserole

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken-vegetable casserole
Baked potatoes

Pears baked with dates and a little honey

Chicken Vegetable Casserole I Just Invented

Ingredients:

2 cups leftover cooked ground chicken with taco seasonings
1 cup frozen corn
1 cup frozen broccoli, more if you love broccoli
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup sour cream
1 egg
1 cup shredded cheese (I used a Tex-Mex blend with jalapenos)
Whole wheat bread crumbs mixed with a little olive oil, enough to cover the top

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a greased 8-inch square pan or casserole dish, combine leftover chicken and vegetables. Combine broth, sour cream and egg, and pour over vegetables. Cover top of casserole with cheese, then crumbs moistened with olive oil. Bake at 350 degrees until set. I took it out after 45 minutes and let it sit 10 minutes before cutting.

You could add extra seasonings, but our chicken and cheese were already well-seasoned, so I let it be.

What's for supper? Chicken tortillas in a pan

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken Tortilla Helper:  ground chicken, cut-up tortillas, black beans, cheddar cheese, homemade taco seasoning, a little salsa, all in a skillet.
Frozen green and yellow beans

A small thawed pumpkin loaf, pears and apples.

What's for supper, after the science experiment?

Tonight's dinner menu:

Skillet casserole made from ground chicken, noodles, and leftover broccoli-cheese sauce from yesterday (I made it to go over baked potatoes)

Instant Red Cabbage Slaw

Chocolate Mini Muffins, made with last night's chocolate pudding as the liquid

How to make Instant Red Cabbage Slaw: Buy a small head of red cabbage for science class.  Pull two leaves from it and use them for cabbage water in a carbon dioxide demonstration.  Think of things to do with the rest of the cabbage that people will actually eat.  Rinse a few more of the leaves and run them through the food processor with some carrot.  Mix with bottled Caesar dressing (or other slaw dressing of your choice).  Eat with enjoyment.

What's for supper?, asks Cheerfully Frugal

Tonight's dinner menu:

A skillet dinner, one of those non-repeatables because it was made with what we had; but it turned out pretty well anyway.  I browned a pound of ground chicken, added diced onion, a bit of garlic powder, and the last of a bag of frozen vegetables (the old kind with carrots, peas and lima beans); stirred in a bowlful of tomato soup and what was left of last night's vegetarian gravy (milk, water and soy sauce thickened with cornstarch). And three stalks of celery, chopped.  So more or less what you might put in chicken pot pie; more gravy-flavoured than tomato.  I cooked a potful of twisty pasta, the kind that is sometimes labelled Scoobi-Doos; when it was cooked but not overdone, I stirred enough into the chicken mixture to turn it into what looked more or less like tuna casserole.  I also added a few spoonfuls of Parmesan cheese, and let the whole thing sit with the heat off, lid on, for another ten minutes.

Dessert was a can of crushed pineapple and a can of mandarin oranges, frozen and run through the food processor.

What's for supper? Chicken tortilla bake

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken Tortilla Bake, made from (browned) ground chicken, torn-up whole wheat tortillas, a can of green chilies, some cheese, and homemade enchilada sauce.  Layer in casserole, bake covered till bubbly and tortillas are soft.  Let sit a few minutes before serving.  Serve with choice of Tex-Mex toppings (I like sliced olives).

Reheated rice, broccoli

Vanilla microwave cake, vanilla ice cream, and warm sauce made from frozen raspberries and apple butter.

What's for supper? Reheat and thaw

Tonight's dinner menu:

Leftover chicken lasagna
Lettuce and carrot salad
Garlic toast triangles

A bit of thawed cake (a birthday cake layer that broke coming out of the pan) with vanilla yogurt and thawed blueberries.

What's for Supper? Stir Fry

Tonight's dinner:

Beef Green Bean Stir Fry, except I'm making it with ground chicken instead of beef, and adding in sliced-thin leftover lasagna noodles (they look really interesting along with the green beans)
Rice
Almonds and chow mein noodles

Vanilla pudding, cookies

When the fridge is empty...or full...(What's for supper?)

The week after New Year's is sometimes a strange one, grocery-wise. As Cardamom Addict pointed out, you may be using up the last of unusual holiday ingredients; in our case, we're also short on/out of a few things. Groceries tomorrow.

So what was in the fridge/freezer/cupboard for supper?

Well, there was quiche, left over from last night. But I was also thawing a package of ground chicken. My plan was just to cook it with a can of no-salt tomato sauce, and serve it over spaghetti. Easy if not inspired. But there wasn't anything extra to put into meat sauce--no mushrooms or peppers. So what about some kind of a white sauce? There was half-and-half cream, the last bought-on-sale grated Romano cheese, sour cream, mixed herbs that I had put together for a food gift (what was left afterwards), Scoobi-doo pasta, frozen peas...all of that went together in a skillet dish loosely based on Chicken Alfredo. It didn't look as fancy as Chicken Alfredo, but it tasted good. It could have maybe used a stronger dose of the herbs, but I was being cautious. Mr. Fixit added hot sauce to his.

And there was a head of iceberg lettuce, bought for economy, not for taste. The middle of the head was too yellow to eat, but the outside was fine. There were half a dozen carrots rolling around the crisper; I sliced one thin for salad and made carrot sticks out of the rest. To the lettuce and carrots I added the last of a bunch of celery, and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. I also opened a can of no-salt chick peas and put them on the table for them that wanted.

There was a rare can of refrigerated crescent rolls, bought last week when the supermarket had them for 99 cents. Ponytails put those together.

I wanted to make cookies today, but we are out of butter and close to the end of the margarine, so it had to be an oil-based recipe. So I mixed up a batch of Sesame Cookies, made without the raisins but with chopped candied ginger added instead. (I used the end of a box of raw sugar too.)

There was some leftover gingerbread cake. And canned peaches if anyone had wanted them, but we were all full enough.

Sometimes you feel like you're starting with nothing. But you end up with something...and leftovers as well.

Cooking without recipes: Summer Edition

What's for supper?

Pizza Pasta. I had thought of making Pizza Roll-ups, but it was too hot to turn on the oven. So this is what I did: browned a pound of ground chicken in a non-stick skillet, added some cut-up pepperoni, a few mushrooms, a chopped green pepper and a bit of canned pasta sauce, and let all that cook while I cooked a potful of fusilli. Just before the end I melted some mozzarella and cheddar over the top of the skillet.

BTW, one of the best frugal and energy-saving tips I've tried recently from the Tightwad Gazette books is the pasta method from the late Mary Leggewie of HomeschoolChristian.com. Bring the water to a boil, add pasta, bring it back to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and cook for about twenty minutes, stirring a couple of times to keep the pasta from sticking. It really works!

Raw vegetable plate: cucumbers, zucchini sticks, a few carrot sticks.

Chocolate Microwave Cake with Raspberry Sauce. (our post about microwave cake) The raspberry sauce was made like this: I partly thawed some frozen raspberries (a couple of cupfuls?). In a saucepan I combined two cups of water, two tablespoons of cornstarch, and a couple of good spoonfuls of raspberry fruit spread; I cooked that until bubbly and then added it to the berries, and we drizzled the sauce over slices of chocolate cake.

A Month with Charlotte Mason, #18

In which we continue our interview with Charlotte Mason. Tomorrow: Mama Squirrel asks (nicely) for some curriculum makeover tips.

Mama Squirrel: Your philosophy of education seems to warn against both too much teaching and too much teacher.

Charlotte Mason: The Herbartian philosophy of education lays the stress of education––the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels, presented in due order––upon the teacher.

Mama Squirrel: Wikipedia says that Herbart advocated five formal steps in teaching: “Using this structure a teacher prepared a topic of interest to the children, presented that topic, and questioned them inductively, so that they reached new knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and deductively summed up the lesson’s achievements, then related them to moral precepts for daily living.” (E.J. Miller, 2003.)

Charlotte Mason: Children taught upon this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher's axiom is, 'What a child learns matters less than how he learns it.' It is not that teachers are not eminently capable, but because information does not become knowledge unless a child perform the ‘act of knowing’ without the intervention of another personality. We do not try to drop one isolated idea at a time into a child’s brain.

Mama Squirrel: So you are not putting down teachers themselves, but saying only that a teacher's teaching can get in the way.

Charlotte Mason: We are, perhaps, opposed to oral lessons or lectures except by way of occasional review or introduction. For actual education children must do their own work out of their own books under the sympathetic guidance of an intelligent teacher.

Mama Squirrel: But how can the teacher teach or guide intelligently without getting in the way? And how does your method of education make it possible for parents to teach their own children? Many of us are somewhat unsure of our own ability to pull out the ideas that our children should know, much less know how to guide just enough and not too much.

Charlotte Mason: We teachers are also modest and diffident and are not prepared to say that we are more capable of handling a subject than is a carefully chosen author who writes especially upon that subject.

Young and Able Teacher: Yes, but professional teachers have been trained to understand children’s minds, and we know when to introduce the proper age-appropriate content and vocabulary. We know better how to reach the minds of children than does the most eloquent author speaking through the dull pages of a book.

Charlotte Mason: We have proven that idea to be completely wrong. The mass of knowledge, evoking vivid imagination and sound judgment, acquired in a term from the proper books, is many times as great, many times more thoroughly visualised by the scholars, than had they waited upon the words of the most able and effective teacher. This is why we insist upon the use of books.

Principal: We tried using a great-books list at our school, but it didn’t work. Maybe we just need better teachers.

Charlotte Mason: No, the failure came because you ignored the principles and their faithful practice. I feel strongly that to attempt to work this method without a firm adherence to the few principles laid down would be not only idle but disastrous.

Deputy Headmistress: It could also be that you used excellent works of literature as mere delivery systems for things like vocabulary, critical thinking skills. If those books are merely delivery systems, then it no longer matters exactly what the children are reading- any book will do, after all, the children are at least reading, some will say, or others will insist it doesn't matter what they learn as long as we teach them how to learn.

Principal: Well, we didn’t get enough parent co-operation either. We asked parents to buy good books for their children but they said they couldn’t afford them.

Charlotte Mason: It is our part to see to it that books take root in the homes of our scholars and we must make parents understand that it is impossible to give a liberal education to children who have not a due provision of very various books.

Cindy: “And now for my LOST tie-in. This week we saw in Illana's tent the book Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. “Leave us to ourselves, without our books, and at once we get into a muddle and lose our way–we don’t know whose side to be on or where to give our allegiance, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We even find it difficult to be human beings with real flesh and blood of our own…”

Charlotte Mason: We find, I may add, that once parents recognize how necessary a considerable supply of books is, they make no difficulty about getting those set in our programmes.

Mama Squirrel: What were the principles that seemed to be missing, even if the books were good ones?

Charlotte Mason: First, the somewhat obvious fact that the child is a person; and the object of a person's education is to put him or her in living touch as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum, taking care, only, that the knowledge offered to him is vital—that is, the facts are not presented without their informing ideas.

Mama Squirrel: I have never totally understood what “without their informing ideas” means. But I think it means that the facts are not pulled apart from their original state, kind of like the nutrients issue that the Deputy Headmistress posted about, from the Michael Pollan food article. Food is often seen today only as a collection of particular nutrients so that it doesn’t matter exactly what food you’re eating, it is more important whether it’s low sodium or high fibre than whether it’s chicken or fish. You can also apply that to facts being presented in kind of a naked way, like the students in Dickens who were giving facts about horses without knowing anything about horses.

Charlotte Mason: I believe I have used that example myself. Yes, that is what “informing ideas” are. And once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is--not completed, but--ensured; he will go on for himself....

Life outside of homeschool posts: thinking dinner as you cook

Dewey's Treehouse has always been somewhat eclectic--we go through seasons of posting mostly frugal stuff or food stuff, and other times when we're more about homeschooling or something else. If you're not into reviews or Charlotte Mason, thanks for your patience.

Yesterday we got home from an errand at shortly after four; I had an hour to get dinner on the table and I wasn't sure yet what I was going to do with the pound of ground chicken that I had left thawing in the fridge. I started it browning while I preheated the oven and mixed up a large pan of brownies, since we didn't have even one cookie or anything like that in the house (well, there was some Jell-O in the fridge, that I'd made up from the other package I bought for the disastrous Gummy Worms experiments). I also cut up some sweet potatoes and put them in a casserole, sprinkled them with pepper, drizzled them with olive oil, and added water to the bottom of the pan; they went in with the brownies. (I should have cut them even smaller because they were still a bit hard at the end; I had to finish them quickly in the microwave.)

When the chicken was pretty much cooked, I added part frozen green beans, one chopped-up cauliflower, and this combination of sauce ingredients: 1/4 cup white salad dressing (what we use instead of mayonnaise), 1/2 cup of cottage cheese (because the recipe I was thinking of calls for sour cream or yogurt and I didn't have either), a bit of garlic powder, and a teaspoonful of chicken bouillon powder. I put the sauce stuff on top of the vegetables, and it didn't look like much, but I was figuring there would be some liquid from the chicken and the frozen beans. In the end I did add a bit of milk: not enough to be soupy, just enough to keep it moist. I just let this cook for awhile on the stovetop until the cauliflower was cooked and it smelled done. I also added in the measly bit of cheddar cheese we had in the fridge. (We are not starving, we just need some groceries.)

And I cooked a potful of Basmati rice.

So: Cheesy Chicken Cauliflower Un-Casserole; baked sweet potatoes; rice; brownies; and the remains of the Jell-O. That was dinner, and the Squirrel family approved it.

What's for supper? (Hold the tomatoes)

That subject line wasn't referring to throwing them--just eating them. To avoid the distress that pasta sauce causes to some Squirrels, Mama Squirrel made a spaghetti dinner tonight without tomato sauce. General recipe: brown a pound of ground chicken with chopped celery and mushrooms. Cook half a box, or a whole box, of spaghettini. Drain the pasta and put into the slow cooker. Top with the chicken-vegetable mixture, including all the pan juices. Season with pepper and oregano and add some cheese on top (we used uncoloured old Cheddar). Cook until the cheese is melted (if everything's already hot, it only takes an hour or so in the slow cooker). (If you'd rather put the whole thing in the oven, you can do that instead. Or just serve it immediately from the pan, if you're ready to eat. We weren't. We were busy shovelling snow.) Scoop it all out as is, or scoop the top part out into a serving bowl so that you can pull the pasta out separately.

If you don't want to dump everything in together and then have to unmix it afterwards, then just keep the pasta separate from the chicken and vegetables; cook it separately when you're ready to serve it.

We had this with the Hillbilly Housewife's Garlic Bread Sticks (leaving out the extra salt), carrot sticks, and sliced kiwi fruit for dessert.

Eating with a smaller mouthprint--Part 1

This is the first set of notes from a church class I led on current food issues and trying to live a somewhat simpler lifestyle. 

 There is a children’s novel by Lois Lowry that is set during World War II, in Denmark. In one of the opening scenes, the mother is out so her daughter starts the potatoes for dinner. That’s not the main event of the opening chapter, it’s just what she’s doing; but in the midst of getting into the rest of the story, you suddenly realize: she’s cooking potatoes for dinner, and that’s all they’re going to have, potatoes, because that’s what people had to eat for dinner during World War II in Denmark. (Note: I don't have a copy of Number the Stars here and I may have misremembered the scene or where it was in the book. If so, I apologize to Lois Lowry.) 

 And I’m sure many of you would be able to contribute similar scenes from your own lives, from growing up with many brothers and sisters during hard times, or from living overseas, or from raising large families yourselves and surviving job losses, bad years on the farm, and other difficulties. Some of you have seen food supply issues from a farmer’s point of view. Some of you have studied business, economics, and world hunger issues in depth; some of you have seen third-world poverty up close. 

Many of you have also been members of the Mennonite faith community for all or most of your lives, and you’ve heard about and practiced simple living in one way or another for years. So I have very little to tell you about the why or how of eating potatoes, or lentils, or rice. Most of you should assume that you know more about that than I do. Many of you also understand better than I do why world food prices are going up, why people in the poorest countries are becoming violent over their lack of food, and why celery here suddenly costs $2.69 a bunch. But I will try to give you a bit of background on my own interest in food and a simpler lifestyle, and our current concerns around the world food situation; and also some possible suggestions for action that I’ve drawn from various places; then I’ll open things up for discussion. 

 I grew up in a family where eating was always of interest, but where the cooking was as likely to be frozen meat pies as roast chicken. My mother loved to bake, but she was busy and found putting dinner on the table tedious. She cooked liver, mainly because my father liked it, and made Weight Watchers desserts in the blender, and cooked turnips and beet tops because they were frugal and nutritious; and we ate it because we were expected, if not always to clean our plates, to at least eat some of whatever we didn’t like so much. At least it worked for me; my sister rebelled and for years wouldn’t eat any vegetables besides frozen peas and corn. My grandmother was a good cook in the Food That Really Schmecks tradition, until too much fried food got both her and Grandpa into trouble and they made a radical switch to eating salads. She still liked to talk about food, though, and her interest in the old recipes also helped me develop an interest in use-what-you-have cooking. 

I spent a lot of my teens and early adult years cooking at home, working in camp kitchens, and experimenting with vegetarian food while I lived on my own. I always liked to read cookbooks, especially ones that focused on more-with-less food; some of the books that I used the most then included the Goldbeck’s Short Order Cookbook, Tassajara Cooking, and the More with Less Cookbook. I also had a copy of Louise Newton’s Good Recipes for Hard Times, and I wish I still had that because it’s gotten very hard to find and it had some great simple meal ideas in it. 

When Mr. Fixit and I were first engaged and he was living in an apartment, I got him a copy of The Urban Peasant, and we still use that. When we were first married, the economy was doing a bit of a turnaround after the boom of the late ‘80’s; wedding rings were cheap but broccoli got to be expensive. My new favourite books became the three Tightwad Gazette guides to frugality, and they helped pull us through some tight years. We realized that we did have quite a few good frugal-living skills already and that we had absorbed a lot from our parents and grandparents. Mr. Fixit was good at car mechanics, home fixups, electronics, and had a good sense of where our money was going. My particular talents included improvising in the kitchen, creative yard saling, and being able to overlook some things that others would fuss over—I’m not a very visual person so whether or not our house was big or small or totally redecorated or not didn’t bother me. After our first child was born, I became very involved with our neighbourhood association and the community centre where we ran our programs. They sent me for training as a community nutrition worker, which is a program that is still going on. CNWS are what they call peer support workers, people that are trained to promote nutrition, run food programs, start collective kitchens and so on. It didn’t end up being a job that I continued for pay, but I did continue to read and write about frugal food and nutrition, especially when I started blogging a few years ago. 

Because I’m in touch so frequently with other parents who also think and talk a lot about these issues and who live on a single income as we do, it sometimes surprises me to realize that our family is a bit out of the mainstream when it comes to things like eating regular meals at home, shopping and cooking together, and in some of the other ways we get by, like yardsaling and not having cable T.V. It just feels kind of normal to us. Besides, I know we’re not the most frugal people around, either; we do eat meat regularly, although we used to cook mostly vegetarian; we buy chips and pop sometimes, and frozen pizzas. Compared to some people I know who drop every chicken carcass in the stockpot almost before the plates have been cleared, I feel like I haven’t really earned my simple living merit badge yet. But we’ll get into comparing and legalism later on. So, to go back a bit—we survived the high food prices of the early ‘90’s, but since then, even though our family has grown to five, we’ve managed to keep our food budget pretty steady up until this year. For over 15 years we kept track of every grocery receipt, and we knew exactly how much money we needed to live on. When we set out our budget for this year, we decided to relax our record keeping and not worry so much about what we spent, because we figured by this time we pretty much had it down. And wouldn’t you know, this is the year our grocery trips suddenly started costing thirty, forty, fifty dollars more, every time. And all of a sudden even going out for burgers started to empty our wallet; our energy bill has gone up. 

Obviously something was up, and the newspaper stories about rising prices confirmed that we are in the middle of a world food and energy crisis that only seems to be getting worse. 

 The commonly-quoted reasons for the rise in food prices seem to be the cost of oil; the increasing demand for more meat and other luxury foods in India and China; and the crops-used-for-ethanol issue; but there's also much larger question about how the price of commodities has been affected by bad economic policies, by too many middlemen, by big business decisions that have affected the whole food industry. I'm still working my way through a long Globe and Mail article about Canadian farmers, middlemen and the stock market, trying to understand how what’s happened in the stock market affects the price of celery here or rice in the Philippines. The short answer (as I understand it) is that the trading rules changed to allow investors to speculate on food futures as they did on other things like oil, and that’s messed things up because food doesn’t work the same way as other commodities. 

 Strangely enough, in some ways food is scarce and in other ways it’s cheap, valueless, a throwaway commodity that’s taking over our landfills and filling the air with methane gas. In developed countries, we still have so much food that we don’t know what to do with it or how to dispose of it—so even edible food becomes just more garbage. It’s something about our super-sized food culture; there’s also the problem that a lot of people have forgotten how to eat, nobody’s home to cook anyway, and they end up grabbing fast food way too often. But since I can’t do much about the stock market or a lot of those other things, my questions and concerns come back to some of the more basic and personal ones: 1. How can we continue to feed our family in the same way, on the same budget we always have; or do we have to rethink some of our shopping habits and food attitudes in order to survive these new challenges? As we said last week about oil prices—do we hear that food prices will be going DOWN anytime soon? 2. How can I communicate those concerns to my children, who, in spite of my lessons and lectures on cleaning the plate or at least “trying some of it,” still don’t think they should have to eat hot cereal, casseroles, leftovers, or lentil soup? 

  “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘Clean the plate, because children are starving in Europe….’ So I would clean the plate, four, five, six times a day. Because somehow I felt that that would keep the children from starving in Europe. But I was wrong. They kept starving. And I got fat.”—Allan Sherman 

 We cannot emphasize guilt or do the Allan Sherman thing, and expect that to be enough, or for our children to understand. We can say it, but they don’t get it any more than Sherman did. 3. How do I keep my focus on God Himself and on my obedience to Him, rather than striving for simplicity for its own sake, or getting into legalism over what we buy or where it comes from? (Simplicity for some people has become a kind of money-making industry, definitely not something we want to buy into.) 

How can I live with an attitude of trust in His provision rather than one of anxiety over finances, pridefulness over how well we’re doing, or obsession over the details of our shopping, menus, and what happens to the leftovers—but still live responsibly and prudently, emphasizing justice, mercy and humility in my attitude towards food as well as in the rest of life? 4. Finally, what can I—or what can you—do in a bigger way to impact our local community and the wider world, working to help feed the hungry, educate people, change policies, and love as Christ loved us? [Whew.] 

 In answer to Question 3, go back to what Doris Janzen Longacre wrote in 1976. There is not just one way to respond, nor is there a single answer to the world’s food problem. It may not be within our capacity to effect an answer. But it is within our capacity to search for a faithful response.—Doris Janzen Longacre, The More-with-Less Cookbook, 1976 It’s still a good general answer—that obedience to God does not mean that we will come up with perfect answers to these questions, but that our search for a faithful response is part of that obedience. 

My obedience is not judged by whether or not I can convince my children to eat their vegetables, although their health and the issue of wasting food are definitely concerns we need to deal with. It is not judged by whether I myself can convince corrupt governments to feed people instead of buying weapons, although Matthew 6 and other Scriptures make it clear that I need to help where I can, for instance by supporting Christian workers and relief agencies working in those countries. I do find in Scripture that I please God with an attitude of thankfulness and delight in His creation; and that I should pray to have just enough, “lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord?, or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” I read that Jesus cares about feeding hungry people; that God said we are worth many sparrows, and that he provided manna, quail and water in the wilderness. 

In other books, I’ve read accounts of God’s faithfulness and provision, even beyond the bare necessities—Granny Han's Breakfast is one story that my children enjoyed. [Unrelated side note: if you're reading that, please preview the photos if you have little ones--there's one scary picture.] I read that Jesus commended a Mary attitude over a Martha one. I read that I should be faithful even with a little; that if we have food, we should be content; that self-control is one of the fruits of the spirit, but that I am also commanded “Go, eat your bread in joy”—Ecclesiastes 8:7. The Bible tells us to love, honour and respect others, including those in our own families—so that would include those who work to pay for the food we eat, those who plan and cook the meals, and those who eat. Out of respect to my husband and children, I try to cook things properly and give them things they like to eat, trying to balance taste with what’s nutritious and what we can afford. Out of respect to me, or whoever else is cooking; out of awareness of the reasons why we eat simply; and, more importantly, out of thankfulness to God, the eaters need to do their best to eat whatever it is without grumbling and complaining or asking for something else. 

Sometimes all that’s easier said than done, especially because these days we are finding the old style of parental authority (do that or else, eat it because I say so) has changed as well. But those are the attitudes that are clearly Scriptural and are there for all Christians. When we try to define eating simply, it’s more important to (simply) live faithfully than to set out a list of everything we must do or not do, especially when we’re not only trying to figure out what to do, we’re trying to get our kids or other family members to do it along with us.. Jesus said it’s not what goes into our mouths but what comes out of them that makes us unclean. Our stray comments and complaints are more powerful than we realize. 

One negative example of this was something we saw once on T.V.; it was about families who were getting food assistance, I think from a food bank, and who were given recipes to help use some of the unfamiliar items. So they showed a woman making spaghetti with lentil sauce, and then her family saying grace, and right away her husband complaining, “what’s this stuff? We’re supposed to eat this? I mean, maybe if we had some cheese on top or something we could at least swallow it.” And so of course nobody would eat it. More for the landfill. Our children see what we really are, what we value, how we use things. If we spend so much time cooking Christmas dinner that we have no time or energy left to celebrate; if we get mad at the kids’ junk food but spend money on adult-style snacks and empty calories—these negative things speak louder to them than our words. 

On the other hand, if our meals are a relaxed time together, and we simply eat with thankfulness, our children see that, and it is the equivalent of many lectures. It’s also important to choose our own priorities carefully. Nobody has all the answers and nobody can or should try to do everything. 

Part Two is here.

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.)

Chicken Chili, or, In defense of chili powder

I'm a cooking Philistine. Really. Dictionary.com agrees: "a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes." Yep, that's us--contentedly commonplace. Especially about things like chili recipes: not for us the poblanos and serranos and ground chocolate. We are pretty content with the recipe from The Tightwad Gazette, Volume II. Without getting gourmet about it, the recipe does lend itself to creativity and using up leftovers, such as the Chicken Chili with Chickpeas that we had last night.

Here's the Tightwad recipe with my variations in brackets.

Homemade Chili/Chickie Chickpea Chili

1 tbsp oil
1 cup chopped onions (1 onion)
1 cup chopped green pepper (1 pepper)
1 lb. hamburger (1 lb. ground chicken plus about a cupful of cooked chicken, chopped small)
1 40-oz. can of kidney beans (1 (smaller) can of kidney beans, plus half a can of mixed beans (including chick peas and blackeyed peas), plus about the same amount of leftover chick peas)
1 28-oz. can of tomatoes (about 1 cup of canned diced tomatoes: I don't use more than that because we have picky eaters who will locate and leave every bit of tomato)
1 6-oz. can of tomato paste (or part of a bigger can)
3/4 cup water or as needed, depending on the amount of tomatoes and tomato paste
1 tbsp chili powder (and I add some salt as well)
(Sliced fresh mushrooms)

Heat oil in a large skillet. Brown onions and peppers. Add hamburger/ground chicken (not the cooked chicken, just the raw) and brown well. Add the mushrooms and chili powder and give them a minute to get started before you add the remaining ingredients (including the chopped chicken). Add 3/4 cup water and simmer, covered, for 1 hour (ours was done in half an hour).

P.S. I also use commercial curry powder. (Not in the chili though.)

Dulcie's Dish

I've mentioned the Beany Malone Cookbook before and given the recipe for Beany's Beans. I thought I had posted this recipe for a helper-like dish before, but I don't see it in our archives. Like Beany's Beans and like our Kitchener Special, this recipe (which we had for supper last night) does not use gourmet ingredients. In fact, the number of recipes we make that include ingredients like ketchup is kind of embarrassing. Not particularly healthy or fashionable, I know. But this one is good, inexpensive, and husbands and young squirrels like it, so I'm passing it on, with a couple of adaptations.

Dulcie's Macaroni Meal in a Skillet

2 tbsp. bacon fat (we leave this out)
1 lb. ground beef or ground chicken (it's good with chicken; in a pinch we have even used bacon)
1 medium onion, diced
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper (or less, to taste--we don't like that much pepper)
1/2 tsp. paprika
1 8-oz. can tomato sauce (or equivalent anything else like tomato puree; last night I used part of a can of diced tomatoes and added a little extra water)
1 1/2 cups water, or as needed (depending on how wet the tomatoes are)
1 tsp. prepared mustard
1 rounded tsp. brown sugar
1 tbsp. cider vinegar
1/2 cup ketchup
2 cups elbow macaroni (we used whole wheat)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese for serving (optional. We were out of Parmesan, so I grated some Cheddar and mixed that in before serving.)

This is how I do it. Because the list of spices and things is kind of long, I combine the salt, pepper and paprika with the cupful or canful of tomato sauce (just dump them in the top of the opened can). I put the mustard, sugar and vinegar into the half cup of ketchup. I chop the onion and start browning the ground meat in a large skillet that has a cover; when it's almost done I stir in the onion and finish browning it. When the onion's soft, I add the tomato sauce mixture. The recipe says to rinse the tomato sauce can out with the 1 1/2 cups of water and add that to the skillet. (If you don't have a tomato sauce can, obviously you just measure out the water and add that.) And then add the ketchup mixture.

Stir it all together, bring it to a boil, and then add the two cups of macaroni. Let it boil for a minute or two, and then cover (if you haven't already), turn the heat down, and cook for about 1/2 an hour or until the macaroni is done. You can check it occasionally and add more water if necessary. Mix in grated cheese if you want, or serve with Parmesan at the table.

You can also add canned grean beans or mushrooms to this skillet meal; we've done both. Mr. Fixit likes to add hot sauce at the table.

Treehouse Recipe Index for 2005

Over the year I included quite a few recipes in the Treehouse posts. Just so they don't all get lost in the archives, here's a list with links to the original posts. I'm not including the ones that were given only as a link.

(Some of these came from Canadian Living Magazine, some are from our cookbooks, and some are just things we've figured out.)

Butterscotch Dumplings (June)
Fruit Crisp (June)
Honey-Mustard Chicken (June)
Macaroni and Cheese, the Real Kind (June)
Sweet Potatoes or Squash (June)
Sausage and Sauerkraut (June)
Vegan Gingerbread (June)

Hot German Cauliflower Salad (July)
Mushroom Steak Bake (July)
Beef and Salsa Burritos (July)
Ground Chicken Skillet, or Evan’s Mom would Never Recognize This (July)
Chicken Cacciatore (July)
Frozen Tortoni Dessert (July)
Summer Shortcake (July)
Pineapple-Orange Rings (July)

Kitchen Sink Cookies (September)
Pumpkin Butter (September)

Cranberry Sauce (October)
Bread Stuffing (October)
Old-Fashioned Gingersnaps (October)
Yogurt-Bran Muffins (October)

Artichoke Hearts Saute (November)
Dried Fruit Bars (November)
Beany's Beans (November)

Double Ginger Drop Cookies (December)
No-Bake Apricot Nuggets (December)
Quick Fruit and Nut Fudge (December)

Dinner with the Squirrels, Part 2

Climb up into our Treehouse and join us for another round of things we make when we don't want to spend all day cooking. Stay for dinner too, maybe Mr. Fixit will make cabbage rolls. They're very good with:

Herbed Beer Bread (no yeast, doesn't have to rise)

The Squirrels’ recipe is identical to this one (link updated 2020). It works fine with de-alcoholized beer; bring the can of beer to room temperature first. Mama Squirrel has baked it in both a loaf pan and in an 8 inch square pan; in the square pan, she can use the toaster oven and it doesn't heat up the house.


Mushroom Steak Bake

To do this, you need either a package of fairly thin steak pieces, or a small roast that you’ve sliced into steak-sized pieces. The Squirrels have tried it both ways, depending on what was on sale that week. Put the pieces of beef into a casserole and cover with a can of condensed mushroom soup and either a can of mushrooms (drained) or some fresh mushrooms (or both). Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and a half (depending on the thickness and amount of meat). Thicken the sauce at the end if you really need to (with flour or cornstarch).


Beef and Salsa Burritos (National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Beef Board)

This is a good quick dinner if you've remembered to thaw the beef and the spinach. Somebody can grate cheese while you brown the meat, and you're all set.

1 to 1 1/4 pounds ground beef (the recipe says 1 1/4 pounds, but whoever buys exactly that much? We just use a pound-size package.)
1 ½ tbsp. chili powder (we use only 1 tbsp.)
½ tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper (op.)
1 pkg (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained (or you can use fresh chopped)
1 to 1 1/4 cup prepared chunky salsa
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
8 medium flour tortillas, warmed (we use whole wheat)

In large nonstick skillet, brown ground beef, and drain if necessary. Add seasonings; stir in spinach and salsa; heat through. Remove from heat, stir in cheese. Wrap in tortillas and serve. (We usually cook a pot of rice to go along with these.)


Ground Chicken Skillet, or Evan’s Mom would Never Recognize This

We adapted this recipe from Jill Bond’s book Dinner’s In the Freezer. She called it Evan’s Mom’s Casserole, but our version’s no longer a casserole and we changed the seasoning from dill to curry (since Mr. Fixit does not like dill much. He wishes Mama Squirrel would also leave the dill out of the Beer Bread, but Mama Squirrel is willing to go only so far.)

1 lb. ground chicken
1 onion, chopped
1 can condensed tomato soup
1 can green beans (or use fresh ones)
1 can mushrooms (op.)
1 tsp. curry powder or to taste
Salt (op.)
Something to serve it over (rice or noodles)

Brown the chicken and onion in a skillet. Add the remaining ingredients and heat through. Serve over rice or noodles, passing hot sauce for anyone who thinks 1 teaspoon of curry powder doesn’t have much pow.


Chicken Cacciatore

Everybody has a recipe for this, but this is Mama Squirrel’s easy way. The Squirrels like the canned pasta sauces that come in different flavours; one variety is tomato-onion, which saves chopping onions when you’re in a hurry; and another one has a strong garlic flavour that’s very good with chicken. Either one will work with this recipe, and regular spaghetti sauce would be fine too.

So: put one pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in a small greased casserole; add about half a 680 ml can of pasta sauce (one of those tall ones, for the Americans). (The chicken will give off some liquid as well, so you probably don’t want to use the whole can unless you’re doubling the recipe.) Add anything you like to cook along with the chicken–chopped peppers, mushrooms, canned chickpeas, chopped zucchini (although mushrooms and zucchini could also be added later so they don’t get mushy). Cover and bake for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how thick the chicken is. When the chicken’s cooked through, you may want to thicken the sauce with either a small can of tomato paste or some cornstarch mixed with cold water. Serve on pasta (preferably whole wheat). You can cook this dinner in the crockpot too.


Frozen Tortoni Dessert (adapted from The Goldbecks’ Short-Order Cookbook, by Nikki & David Goldbeck)

If you can make popsicles, you can make this–it’s just a bit dressier.

You need: 1 2-cup container ricotta cheese (light is fine); 1/4 cup honey; 1 tsp. almond extract; 8 tsp. finely ground almonds (we don’t use this, see below)

Whip ricotta, honey and almond extract with an electric beater or in the food processor, till it’s smooth, light and fluffy. Line a muffin tin with 8 paper liners and fill with mixture. Sprinkle each with 1 tsp. ground almonds, or other toppings. Freeze. When solid, remove from tin and wrap in freezer bags or foil (if you’re going to do them ahead). Let stand for a few minutes at room temperature to soften slightly before serving.

The Squirrels don’t usually have ground almonds around (funny thing), so we have tried this with other toppings: a few chocolate chips, a ring of pineapple, a ring of pineapple with chocolate chips in the middle...at Christmas time, we made these and decorated them with white chocolate chips and red candied cherries. They’re quite small, so you might want to allow two per person unless they’re very small people. (And if you have small people and use chocolate chips, warn them to watch their teeth, unless they're little squirrels: frozen chips can get pretty hard.) Or freeze twice as much in four little dishes instead of eight muffin papers.


Summer Shortcake (from Food that Really Schmecks, by Edna Staebler)

Mr. Fixit does not have a sweet tooth and does not care for those little yellow spongy cakes that are sold to make strawberry shortcake with. But he does like this version, which is more like a pan of biscuits than a cake. Mama Squirrel has cut it in half from Edna’s original version, but you can double it back again and bake it in a 9 x 13 pan.

2 cups flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ cup sugar, plus a spoonful for sprinkling
½ tsp. salt
½ cup oil or shortening
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

If you’re making your own sour milk, add 1 tbsp. vinegar to a cup of milk and let it sit for about five minutes while you mix the rest. Mis the dry ingredients and the oil or shortening until the mixture is crumbly. Add the sour milk and mix just enough to make sure the dry part is moistened. Spread the dough in a greased 8 or 9 inch pan. Sprinkle a spoonful of white sugar over the top, unless that idea really turns you off, and bake in a 400-degree oven for about 20 minutes, or a bit longer–prick the centre to be sure it’s done (especially in hot muggy weather). Serve warm and smothered with strawberries, blueberries or slice peaches, plus some vanilla yogurt or tofu topping or whatever other topping you like. I usually cut it in squares and then split a square on each serving plate, dollop some yogurt on, and cover with fruit.


Pineapple-Orange Rings

This one is really simple–even Crayons can help make it. In each dessert bowl, stack two canned pineapple rings. Stuff the hole in the middle with canned mandarin oranges (be generous but not messy). Chill well before serving. The Squirrels think this dessert looks like summer sunshine in the winter.