Meal Stretcher Monday: Shredded Cheese

We use shredded cheese pretty often - mozzarella in baked ziti, on pizza, cheddar on chili or in burritos, etc.

I have noticed that there appears to be a shredding fee.  Look:

Shredded: 8 ounces for $2.28.

Un-shredded: 32 ounces for $7.98.

So, if I buy the block and shred it, it's like getting 4 of those 8-ounce bags for $1.99 each.

But, isn't shredding cheese by hand a pain the @$$?  Why yes.  Yes it is.

Or it would be...if I hadn't STALKED THAT FOOD PROCESSOR!

Meal Stretcher Monday: Home Made Ranch!

I have made no secret of my love for vegetables.  Now that the weather has warmed up, and I have discovered the tragic loss of my waistline from a winter of "comfort" foods, I'm spending even more time with my veggies.

The other day I bought carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, and cauliflower from my grocery's produce aisle. I was going to pick up a container of ranch dip, but they were out.  Rather than schlep across town to plunk down four bucks, I decided to see if I could make my own.

Mmm.  Dippy.

To the internet!

Meal Stretcher Monday: Stir Fry Sauce!

Necessity is the mother of invention.  And Google.

I was in the middle of making up some yummy, home made stir fry, when I realized that we were totally out of stir fry sauce.  Husband offered to go on a run to the store, but he wouldn't have been back in time.

To the internet!

I came across this recipe on food.com, which looked simple enough - and I had all of the ingredients.  Time to grab a bowl.

Meal Stretcher Monday: Taco Seasoning Mix

My lips are on fire.  Allow me explain: Tonight is Burrito Night.

Mmm.  Burrito Night.

Usually, Husband makes up a meat filling and I make a vegetarian version, but we both add those envelopes of "taco seasoning" that have all sorts of ingredients that I can't pronounce.  I have read in quite a few places that making your own seasoning mixes saves money, and keeps you away from ingredients that you may not want to be ingesting (preservatives, etc.)  

I'm on it!  Tonight's the night I make my own taco/burrito seasoning mix!

Meal Stretcher Monday: Check Your Eggs

I hate wasting food.  Today I stood holding an entire carton of eggs that I had let slip past their expiration date unused.  Rookie mistake.

But...they're only one day past the date....I wonder if they might still be good...?

Apparently, there's an easy trick for this:

Healthy eggs will sink in cold water, while spoiled eggs will float.

Healthy eggs.

Spoiled eggs.

Done!  About a minute of work and zero dollars just saved me 9 whole eggs!

Meal Stretcher Monday: Microwave Popcorn

My older son is in kindergarten.  I get daily reports as a part of a behavior plan for him (I may have mentioned before, but he has Asperger's Syndrome).  If he does well, he gets a special snack when he gets home.

He always selects popcorn as a snack.  Always.

We've been stocking up on microwave popcorn, which is both expensive, and kind of slimy and gross.

I was looking into getting an air popper (mine died years ago), but I came across a few people in a post board saying that I could air pop corn in a microwave.

Meal Stretcher Monday: Check the Unit Price

For Easter I was going to make risotto (If you are unfamiliar, it's a creamy sort of rice dish from northern Italy).  This requires a special kind of short grain rice called arborio rice.  It has a high starch content, which gives the dish it's creamy texture (there's no actual cream in the dish).

Walmart ain't the right place to get arborio rice.  They don't exactly offer higher end international stuff.

Off to the local co-op.  I found several brands and sizes .  Usually, I buy in larger packages because it winds up cheaper in the long run, but I noticed something...odd.  I took pictures for you.  See if you can figure out what's wrong.

       

Meal Stretcher Monday: Millet

I keep seeing recipes for quinoa. The problem (other than that it took me weeks to pronounce it correctly) is that the only quinoa (KEEN-wa) that I could find around here was $9 for one pound.

Hm... There's this millet stuff right by there that cost $3 for TWO pounds. I wonder what that is.

Turns out (after a little internet research) that millet is actually often used as a substitute for quinoa! Well, what do you know!

Meal Stretcher Monday - Cranberry Sauce

Way back during November and December, the store flyers all had typical holiday season fare front and center. Turkey, cranberry sauce, ham, potatoes, pies, etc. were all being highly promoted. We loaded up - like most families.

There's always one item in that list that just leaves me somewhere between angry and disappointed.

No, not the meats. The "cranberry sauce".

The problem is that they are promoting that freaky, gelatinous goo in a can.

THAT IS NOT CRANBERRY SAUCE.

Trust me.

Here's what to do instead. Get this stuff.

It's one bag of cranberries ($1.50), one cup of orange juice, and one cup of sugar (these cost me nothing as they were in my fridge and cupboard already).

Get a saucepan, and put in on the stove on medium heat.

Meal Stretcher Monday: Brownie Bites

My Husband has a weakness for pre-packed desserts. His ideal grocery trip likely involves buying his weight in PopTarts. For the sake of convenience, he picked up some Little Bites Brownie Bites to throw into lunch boxes or keep kids quiet in the car (okay, that actually wasn't a bad idea).

The problem is that this little box here contains 5 envelopes of 3 brownie bites each, and costs around $3.50.

Nope. I can do better.

Thankfully, I have this pan here:

The wells are the same size as the Little Bites, but there are 24 of them instead of 15. Already we're on a roll.

You can use a mix (usually about $1.50), or if you have the ingredients, make them from scratch with a recipe like the Best Brownies recipe from Hershey's.
Fill your wells, and bake!

(Pardon the mess along the sides of the wells. There was a toddler attached to my leg chanting "browniebrowniebrowniebrowniebrownie".)

Note: these wells are small! You'll need a MUCH shorter cooking time (mine took 8 minutes). Had I tried to leave them for the 25 minutes in the original recipe I would have had charcoal briquettes.

Voila!

It's a messy picture. I planned to take a better one with them all stacked nicely on a plate, maybe with a glass of milk in the background.... Too late. I was overruled and the brownies were gone way too fast.

Let's look at the savings here. Assuming that 3 brownies is a serving...

Little Bites: 5 servings for $3.50. That's $0.70 per serving.

Mix: 8 servings for $1.50. That's under $0.19 per serving.

Mine were from scratch and since I had all of the materials, they cost me nothing.

I know what's going into our lunch boxes.

Meal Stretcher Monday - Squash

Every year from the end of summer until at least Christmas there is a display of odd looking squashes in the produce department of the grocery store. They are all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors, and run from cute to a bit frightening. It was actually only a couple of years ago when I realized that they are also delicious. All of them.

Recently a co-worker offered me a few of her extra home-grown squash. I leapt on that like a politician on a photo op.

I want to show you the ultimate fate of two of them: a spaghetti squash, and a buttercup squash.

Let's start with the spaghetti squash. Start by cutting it in half lengthwise.

Use an ice cream scoop to remove the seeds and guts.

Be careful not to scrape too far into the flesh itself - that's the part that you want to eat! Spaghetti squash is naturally stringy. Even if you are scraping into the flesh itself, you will still be seeing strings like you did for the guts. Just scrape it until you get a relatively even surface.

The same exact thing needs to be done to the buttercup squash. Or any winter squash, really. Just cut them in half lengthwise...

...scoop out the seeds and guts, and place the pieces open side down on a baking sheet.

Your baking times will vary, but these two squash together took about 35 minutes at 400 degrees F. They smell AMAZING, and you can see that the hulls caramelized a little.

After the hulls have cooled enough to touch, the cooked flesh is easily removed with a fork. The spaghetti squash pulls off in strings (like spaghetti)...

...while the buttercup is much creamier in texture.

The buttercup squash is ideal as a side dish (with just a little pat of butter). Even from this small squash I got over four cups of delicious goodness.

The small spaghetti squash yielded about as much, but I had already dressed it with pasta sauce and grated cheese by the time I remembered to take a picture. Yum.

Total cost: $0

Had I actually bought these in a store, the total cost would have been about $5.

Meal Stretcher Monday - Split Pea Soup

I love fall. I love the colors, the holidays, the excuse to wear sweaters...

I don't love the cold. I don't love the rain. I don't love the cold rain. I also don't love the hurried rush for dinner that comes from my return to teaching. When I get home, I want a healthy, hot meal that requires no actual thinking.

Soup!

Split pea soup is one of my favorite soups (because it's insanely easy, and I have been known to be lazy.

Here's how it goes:

Get a bag of split peas (I got this one at a discount store for $3.50). Do the whole sort/rinse/drain thing recommended on the bag (it takes about 3 minutes). Put them into a big soup pot.

Chop an onion and add it to the pot.

Now add your liquid of choice. Some use broth, but I chose to use 8 cups of water to two cups of peas, plus some vegetable bullion to round out the flavor. If you are so inclined, you can add ham. Due to the whole vegetarian thing, I didn't.

Now you just boil it on medium until the peas are soft (about 30-40 minutes). I finish mine up with the immersion blender to make it a little smoother.

Voila!

This bowl is larger than it looks and makes enough soup for a whole family, plus lots for freezing. I freeze mine in small zipper bags, so I can grab one and throw it in my lunch box and heat it at work.

The total for all of this? Just that $3.50. It works out to be about 20 cups of soup (so at least 20 portions), which is around $0.17 per portion. This is way better than a can of pre-made soup with about 2 portions for $2.

Enjoy!

Meal Stretcher Monday - Kindergarten Bars

My husband never used to eat during the day at work. He would be so hungry and tired by the end of the day that he would over eat and be crabby. Thankfully, he started at least bringing a light breakfast with him - usually water or juice and a Clif Bar.

I'm glad that he's taking something. I'm glad that it's something with some good ingredients and filling fiber. I'm not overwhelmingly glad that those little buggers are kind of expensive.

So I have been cruising the internet for recipes to make something similar at home. I have discovered that there is a basic formula for most granola bars:

2-2.5 cups of grains/carbs/cereal
1/2 cup nut or seed butter
1/3-1/2 cup sticky syrupy stuff (brown rice syrup, maple syrup, honey, etc)
1/2-1 cup "treats" (nuts, fruit, chocolate chips, marshmallows, etc)
1-2 tsp other flavorings (vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoa powder, etc)
2-4 tbsp "healthy powder" (protein powder, flax powder, milk powder, etc)

I called the ones I made today "Kindergarten Bars" in the hopes of interesting my older son, who is about to enter kindergarten. He has Asperger's and is deeply suspicious of foods that are not smooth, or are not white/yellow, or are not Goldfish crackers. My hope is that he would want to help me make them, and might even eat a few. Hope.

Kindergarten Bars
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups Rice Krispies
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup raisins
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp flax powder

Mix the dry ingredients.

Add the peanut butter, honey, and vanilla, then SMOOSH IT ALL TOGETHER!

Some recipes call for the nut butter and syrup to be melted together in the microwave or on the stove. I wanted these bars to be kid friendly to make, so I decided we would just mush these all together with our hands instead of cooking anything.

It. Was. Fun.

Shame the kids didn't want to do it with me. Meh. I had a blast.

It's really sticky, so there was no way to take pictures.

At the end it was a bit stiff to work into the pan, so I microwaved the whole bowl for 30 seconds, then used a rubber spatula to mash it down into the pan. After cooling, I meant to cut them into 12 bars, but I had a math problem and cut 16.

These are DELICIOUS. I really hope my husband likes them, but since they may not last until he gets home....who knows?

Meal Stretcher Monday - Bread

Due to the drought conditions around our country, groceries are going up in price. Again. This is perfectly understandable, but also a cause for long-term concern. Remember when the gas prices shot up, then food prices shot up, then gas prices fell, then food prices...didn't? Yeah. I find myself scared that this is happening again.

Fittingly enough, it's time for...MEAL STRETCHER MONDAY! This is my weekly attempt to make some recipe that will save us grocery money in the long run. This week: bread!
Note: this is coming out on a Tuesday. Sorry! Our internet failed yesterday, so I'm a day late.

I have been trying to find a bread recipe that can mimic the springy quality of the store bought bread that we use for sandwiches/toast/etc around here.

Seeing as how I'm not terribly skilled at making bread...this could take me a while.

The recipe for this attempt comes from The Progressive Pioneer and claims to be no-fail. Hm... Let's give it a go!

Ingredients:
7 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
2 (heaping) Tbsp olive oil (or lecithin granules - which I don't own)
3.5 cups warm water
1.5 tsp yeast
1/4 cup honey

First, I mixed the warm water and honey together, then sprinkled the yeast over the top, then got distracted by the kids for a few minutes.

Next, I mixed half of the flour (3.5 cups), the salt, and the olive oil in the bowl of my mixer and stirred it together, slowly adding the yeast mixture.

Once it was mixed into a smooth batter, I added the remaining flour and switched to the dough hook.
The Progressive Pioneer recommended mixing for 7 minutes. I have no idea how long I mixed, because the kids managed took that moment to mutiny. Next time, seven minutes for sure.

After the mixing, my dough was a little less stretchy than it should have been (probably from over-kneading), but still looked good. I split the dough between my only two bread pans and baked.

Look at that deliciousness! You want to bite the screen, don't you? Yeah, you do.

It's tasty, it's springy, it's filling, it cuts beautifully without crumbling. I'm in love. Okay, my preschooler won't eat it because it's not exactly like the store-bought kind, but the toddler and I have been demolishing it. Amazing.

Meal Stretcher Monday - Chili

We're on an increasing trend toward vegetarian meals in this house. I am a vegetarian, but I am willing to cook meat for my family if they wish. So why all the extra plant-based meals? I would love to say that it all comes down to health and making better choices for our bodies. I would be lying. It all comes down to cost.
Here's some ground beef I saw in the store today. At $3.38/lb, it's actually even a little cheaper than the national average, which I last saw hovering around $3.80. Remember, depending on where you are shopping, some of what is in this package isn't pure beef (remember pink slime?)

I'm not going to force anyone to stop eating meat. If vegetarianism is for you, you'll get to it. That being said, stretch your meal budget. Stop putting meat where you don't really taste it. A steak dinner? Yeah, you'll taste the meat. Chili? Not so much.

I make a good vegetarian chili. I mean, GOOD. You'll love it. Trust me. And of course, you know it's cheap.
Side note: When I have brought my chili to functions, people have often thought that it was mislabeled as 'vegetarian'. At one point someone moved my 'vegetarian' sign and stuck it on a salad bowl. Poor guy didn't realize that plant-based foods are not all salad.

Ordinarily, I make this with something like MorningStar Farms Meal Starters. While this is certainly healthier than meat, it's just about as expensive right now.

This time, I'm using straight up TVP (textured vegetable protein).

TVP is a soy product. It is a good source of protein, has no fat, 80 calories per serving, and is REALLY CHEAP. The bag in the picture cost me $2.50 at Job Lot, and makes the equivalent of over two pounds of meat.

Today, I'm making a double batch of chili. Let's compare:
4 cups of ground beef (cooked) = $6.72
4 cups of TVP (cooked = $2.50

Yep.

Let's get started!

Vegan Chili Recipe (double batch)
Ingredients
2 cups TVP (dry)
2 medium onions (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
1 large can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
2 small cans (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes (undrained)
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 cans beans of your choice (rinsed and drained)

Put the TVP in a large bowl. Over top of it, pour 1 3/4 cups boiling water or vegetable broth. (I used broth made from a vegetable bullion, so I left the salt out of the recipe). Stir and let sit for 10 minutes.

While you are waiting, cook the onions on medium heat until tender.

Add the rehydrated TVP and stir. Cook for about a minute.

Add the tomatoes and spices. Cover and cook on low for about 40 minutes.

Add the beans and cook an additional 10 minutes.

Serve with cheese, or sour cream, or whatever you would usually choose to serve chili with.

My carnivore Husband just polished off a big bowl of it - and he has a deep and abiding suspicion of soy. Believe me; if he doesn't miss the meat, you won't either.