Baby Food, Revisited

Baby Cora has really taken to eating food lately!  The last time I posted about it, she still wasn't all that interested in food.  As much as I stressed over the what and the how in the beginning, I am relieved now that it's all working out.  We are still sorta doing baby-led weaning (BLW), but there are just some foods I wanted to introduce that don't work that way.  Plus, we now feed her twice a day (lunch and dinner), and my lunch foods are not very baby-friendly.  If we're spoon-feeding her and she really likes it, she will grab the spoon and help guide it into her mouth.  In addition, she still hasn't mastered the sippy cup (she just chews on it), but she totally drinks out of a regular cup when we hold it to her mouth and she sometimes grabs the sides.  I went to Target and got some little kid-sized plastic cups and bowls that were on clearance in the kitchen section, and they are perfect.  (I got 4 pieces for $1--can't beat that!  Pink and purple, too.)

The downfall of the BLW approach for me is that it just assumes you're eating super-healthy, which I often am not (especially for lunch).  One thing that has helped me a lot is a site called Babyfood101.  I have absolutely no idea how I stumbled upon this place, but it has been my saving grace.  Instead of being overwhelmed by a bunch of options, I get one email a week that tells me two new foods to give to baby (here's an example for the curious).  It tells me at what age she's ready (and it always matches up to her age, so there's never a food she's not ready for), how to prepare it, whether it is worth it to buy it organic or not, and it even gives an adult recipe for the food too.  For someone like me who has never had a good relationship with food (I generally eat for sustenance and didn't learn to cook until my 20's, so I mostly stick to the same stuff all the time), this is fan-freakin'-tastic!  I've been learning a lot about food and trying new things myself as well.

Oh, and most of the preparation that the site gives me is catered to not having much time (i.e., buy frozen peas instead of shelling them because they freeze well) and none of it has involved a steamer basket.  Most of the things can be finger foods or "fork-mashed" too, so I've only busted out the blender once--and it wasn't for lack of trying to do without it first when we did green beans.  I've used plain whole yogurt to our advantage too, as sometimes I just mix the food with that.  Who would've thought my baby would like pea-flavored yogurt?

Yum-o!

Speaking of the greens, I decided for this past week to be a vegetarian.  It's on my 101 list, so I figured now was a good time.  I also got to cross off another goal, which was to make something from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I made her Ratatouille on Sunday night.  Her directions were pretty clear, and I learned how to juice and peel a tomato easily, but I still kinda screwed it up.  It just didn't have enough tomato at the end, so I did what any normal American would do and threw a can of tomato sauce in there.  The whole thing probably should have cooked even longer after that, but we were getting hungry.  The dish came out alright, but it was not nearly as good as the version my cousin made at Thanksgiving that B and I had both raved over.  From the ratatouille, though, we gave baby some green peppers and she loved them.  She has mostly liked everything so far except white potatoes.

Going vegetarian for the week wasn't all too hard, but I realized that almost everything I made had a tomato base to it.  Even the Boca burgers had tomato ketchup!  I also realized that I could never be vegan.  Or at least it would require a major pantry/fridge overhaul to do so, and at this point in unemployment/possibly-moving-soon, that is just out of the question.  As for being vegetarian?  I went to the store one night, and the fried chicken someone behind me was buying smelled heavenly.  I had already eaten dinner, too!  One week was enough for me, so pass me that bucket of chicken already.

Truly Old-Fashioned

I should have done this a long time ago.

Yeah, that?  I made it.

Thus fulfilling . . .

✔ 38. Make ice cream from scratch

Now before you roll your eyes and say, "Whatever, no big deal," let me inform you that I did this without an ice cream maker.  Let me say that again, but in bold and all caps.  I MADE IT WITHOUT AN ICE CREAM MAKER.

We don't have the space for one, and I didn't want to buy something I might use only once a year anyway.  (Yes, I know you can get them for cheap at a thrift store, but that's not the point here.)

Okay, so how did I do it, you ask?  I have actually made ice cream in the bag method before, way back in my Girl Scout days.  That's sorta fun, but you should probably buy rock salt and you'll need some good plastic bags.  Also, the ice cream isn't as good as the kind you buy.  For that, you need a custard base, which means eggs and a little bit of cooking.

Where's an easy place to find a good ice cream recipe?  Screw Pinterest, this one calls for tried and true.  Betty Crocker red book to the rescue.  Here is her vanilla ice cream recipe.

Now, as for the freezing it into ice cream part, I searched around and found this guy's method.  The basic premise is that you put it in the freezer and just keep stirring it every half hour or so for at least 3 hours.  Yes, it takes much longer than whatever magic an ice cream maker does, but it worked!  The timing was perfect, too, as our ice cream was ready right after baby went to bed!  (It was soft serve consistency around the 3-hour mark, so I actually tacked on an extra hour.)

It was pretty cool watching it slowly turn into ice cream over the course of the evening!

It came out so good!  The only ingredient I actually had to purchase specifically for this was heavy cream.  Everything else was on hand.

I actually did a little happy dance in the kitchen after getting these two beautiful scoops into the bowl.

Have you ever made ice cream without a gadget?  How did it turn out?

a big meal for just us two

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I don't really like to cook all that much. And this pregnancy obviously hasn't helped. Most nights, B is lucky if there are two options on the table. It's usually an entree and some veggies from the freezer. Sometimes no veggies at all, just a cut-up apple.

But then I decided, at 35 weeks pregnant, that I could and would make Thanksgiving dinner.  Well, actually it was Christmas dinner, but it mostly resembled a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner.  I didn't get too ambitious, but it was definitely a bigger meal than we've been eating lately!  The best part?  I didn't even call my mother for help.  Thus, fulfilling . . .

✔ 37. Cook Thanksgiving dinner with minimal help from my mother

Yes, I even busted out our wedding china!

The menu:

• Roast chicken.  I decided this was more practical (and quicker) than a giant turkey.  One of my aunts had given us some homemade rosemary-garlic olive oil for Christmas.  I opened the present in the morning and decided it would be perfect for coating our chicken!  I then added a few extra herbs.  It came out so tender and delicious.  I mostly just followed the directions on the chicken's packaging and then basted it occasionally.  (My digital meat thermometer is awesome, by the way--it beeps when the meat is the correct temperature!)  Of course, we're still eating this bird 4 days later since it was still a lot of meat. Less cooking for me, so I don't mind one bit.

• Stuffing (box mix).  I only like the stuff that comes out of the bird, so I froze the leftover dressing for later.
• Buttermilk mashed potatoes.  Betty Crocker recipe.  I wish I had made more; these are always a fave of mine.
• Rolls from a box mix.  Hawaiian sweet rolls, to be exact.  They didn't rise as much as they should have, but they were really good.  I had found this in my mom's pantry on a trip home (she lets me go "shopping" when I'm in town), and now I want to find another box so I can try again.

This was before they went into the oven, obviously.

• Steamed broccoli.  I needed a green vegetable, what with all the starches running around.
• Gravy.  This was my nemesis.  I almost forgot about it, too.  I have never actually made gravy before (to be honest, I don't generally like it) and was trying to follow Betty Crocker's recipe for Pan Gravy.  I usually do very well with Betty, and I would probably jump off a cliff if one of her recipes called for it, but this one just didn't make sense to me.  I read and re-read the thing at least 3 times.  I figured out we were going for a roux, but I was a bit rushed at this point and my roux never bubbled.  I added some liquid and tried to bring that to a boil and then everything separated on me.  It went to the table anyway because B was finished carving the bird.  The good news was that the gravy tasted amazing (and even I liked it!), but it was definitely nowhere close to the correct consistency.  I told B that it was "homestyle" gravy because I've decided you can get away with a lot of flubs if you just give it a pretty label.
• Apple pie.  This is only the second time I've made it (see this post for the first).  I followed the same recipe (thanks again to Betty) and had the exact same problem with not being able to get the crust off my work surface.  Sigh.  I cursed at it a bit and then re-rolled it.  I decided on a lattice top so I wouldn't have to deal with that issue more than once.  I am so glad I decided to make my pie the previous day.  We just popped it in the oven for a bit (foil on top) on Christmas night and added some ice cream!

So my Christmas day was spent mostly in the kitchen.  I told B that I was so glad we have an open kitchen/dining/living room area, since otherwise I would have felt like a slave (and very lonely while B played on the Wii).  I think an open area like this will be a requirement for any future house we buy, since I don't like cooking enough to be content in one all by myself while fun stuff is going on in another room.

That was basically my "Thanksgiving in training," and if I ever do anything bigger, I better have some extra hands to help!

  

 

recipe: Mexican pasta skillet

Or Mexican Chop Suey, if you will.  This dish was mentioned when Nicole from Flip Flops and Combat Boots did an "Inspire Me" post way back in January with my suggestions.  (Check it out here.)  She loved it, and many of the commenters wanted the recipe, so here it is, folks!

I cannot take any credit at all for this recipe.  It came from some book somewhere and my friend shared it with me, and now I'm sharing it with you.  I believe that is how recipes are supposed to work.

The ingredients are ground beef (or a substitute would probably be fine), tomato sauce, jar of salsa, water, elbow mac, frozen corn niblets, and cheese.

6 ingredients (not including water).  6 cheers for simplicity.

Another great thing about this recipe: you only get one pan dirty!  We'll start with the hardest part: cook your meat.  And drain if necessary.

Then, add your tomato products --a whole jar of salsa and the can of tomato sauce-- along with the water.  Give it a nice little stir and then bring your little soupy mess up to boiling.

I once used diced tomatoes because we were out of tomato sauce.   Turned out fine.

Once it's boiling, then you add the macaroni and the corn.  Cover and simmer for 11-15 minutes, stirring every few minutes to get the mac stuck to the bottom off. 

If you look really closely in the 3rd picture, you can see the Alphabet noodles I tried to sneak in halfway through because I didn't have enough elbow mac.

Once the macaroni is tender, it's time to add the cheese!  Throw a handful (or two) on the top, then cover and simmer for another 1-2 minutes until it melts.

This actually turned out soupier than it was supposed to because I didn't have enough pasta.  Still tasty though!

I'm gonna warn you now.  This makes A LOT OF FOOD.  I'd say it's about 6 servings.  We ate it for 3 nights and then I think I had the rest for lunch one day (making it 7 servings for this house).  Here's a picture of the leftover container after B had scarfed down a huge helping and I ate a normal serving on the first night.

Use the bananas and wine bottle as size references.

 Enjoy!!


The full recipe, about 25 minutes total, serves 6:

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1 jar (16oz.) salsa, choose your level of heat
1 cup (8oz. can) tomato sauce
1.5 cups water
2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
1 cup frozen corn niblets
1.5 cups shredded cheddar cheese (or Mexican blend)

Instructions
1. In 12-inch skillet, cook beef over medium-high heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until cooked; drain.
2. Stir in salsa, tomato sauce, and water.  Heat to boiling.
3. Stir in macaroni and corn.  Reduce heat; cover and simmer 12 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until macaroni is tender.
4. Sprinkle with cheese.  Cover; let stand 1 to 2 minutes until cheese is melted.

menu planning, W-style

Something I've worked hard at since getting married was learning how to menu plan. There must be  something about ensuring the health of another human being that made me want to take it a bit seriously.  Plus, I hate eating fast food (although I crave it often!), and I also hate breaking the budget with dinners out or even those frozen meals.  (The cheap ones ain't healthy, that's for sure.)  My sister keeps telling me that once I have kids, it'll be different and we'll live off of fast food.  (B and I only eat fast food when we're traveling, honestly.)  And my sis also claims that since I don't work, I have time to menu plan.  But I think that now that I've gotten the ball rolling, I should be able to stick with this, come kids or career.  I like keeping our Sundays low-key anyway, and that seems like a pretty good time to block off a half an hour or so to do it.

In addition to being a cheapskate, I hate going to the store (especially the dreaded co-misery commissary).  So the more I plan, the less I have to go.  (And I'm SURE I'll especially hate going to the store once I have to tote along a few little sticky-fingered brats munchkins.)  Luckily for me, B eats almost anything, including leftovers.  That means that I can plan out for 10 meals and it can easily stretch us 20-25 days.  I cook about 3 meals a week, each of which we eat for at least 2 days, and then we go out to eat about once a week and often bring home leftovers.  (In the interest of full disclosure, B's monthly work trip does help stretch the plan out further since I go back to pretending to eat like a single girl again during those few days.)  I went on my big grocery trip on Jan. 4 and didn't go back for a big one again until Jan. 30.  I'm not kidding!  We basically just replenish our milk and banana supply once a week and that's it.

On each meal plan, I always mix it with a few favorites and a few new recipes.  One thing I'm glad that I've done is make a "recipe repertoire."  This handy list frees up space in my brain for more important things, like the quadratic formula (x=‐b/2a ± √(b²-4ac)/2a) or the gestation period of an elephant (22 months).  At the front of my cookbook from friends and family given to me at my bridal shower, I added a page that just lists every meal that I know I'm comfortable making, including the basics.  It's less than 40 right now because I didn't learn to cook until adulthood, but when I really nail something new, I add it.  It's also just a list of guide points, if you want to think of it that way (one entry just says "spaghetti/pasta" -- heaven knows where I can go from there). 

So I use my favorite cookbooks (always my shower one with the repertoire and my Betty Crocker) and scour the index or just see what catches my eye.  I also give consideration to the ones I've saved online, and then just start writing down the ones I want to do.  I read a really good tip on one blog that said only to pull out 2-3 cookbooks so you don't get overwhelmed.  I think the hardest part is balancing out our meals, since I pretty much love anything and everything with ground beef and tomatoes in it.  But I don't want to eat that every day for a month, so I have to stretch a bit.  Lately, I've been making sure to add at least one or two crock pot recipes to my meal plan.  Also, when I realized how everything I know how to make contains meat, I've decided to do at least one vegetarian night per plan.

I think the best thing about my menu plans is that they aren't attached to hard-and-fast dates.  I basically just put the list up on our white board, shop for all of them at once and freeze most of it, and then cross off the meals as I make them.  Yes, this requires deciding the day before the meal which meat to move from the freezer to the fridge for thawing, but it sure as heck beats the daily "What should we have for dinner?" conversation I've heard both my mother and MIL have numerous times.  Sometimes meals on the list never actually happen, but that's alright.  I'm not a gourmet chef (and I'm not even trying to pretend I'm anywhere close), so there's probably a good reason we skipped it.  Maybe next time.  Or maybe never.

This plan got us all the way through January, but I never did make the stew or the desserts!

I know once our family size does grow, I'll be shopping more often, but I definitely don't want it to be a daily thing!  I also better learn how to make big batches of dinner, so I can stretch those leftovers.  I don't like cooking enough to make it a daily chore activity.

And if you're really at a loss and in a time-crunch, try this awesome website called Supercook.com.  I actually had thought of this idea a few years back, and I'm so glad someone who knew what they were doing made it happen.  You can just enter what you already have in your pantry, and it will give you recipes to make using those.  Voilà, no trip to the store for you!  (You always spend more money than you planned on anyway, right?) 

Do you menu plan?  And how long does each plan last?

adventures in barbecue

  Inspired by my friend Elizabeth (a.k.a. The Young Retiree) and my semi-Southern upbringing and current surroundings, I decided to try to make my own barbecue.  Now something Southerners know that the rest of the country doesn't understand is that barbecue is not an action.  And it is not a party. That is called a cookout.  Barbecue is pulled pork, usually on a sandwich.  I didn't grow up cooking, and my mom falls just a bit short of being a "real" Southerner, so I needed some help.

I read Elizabeth's post, which was pretty good, but I still thought I needed some 'professional' guidance.   A Google search brought me to this About.com video.   Okay, so it's not exactly a cooking site and that woman is a tad on the scary side, but it looked easy and I felt empowered!  And now to find a pork shoulder . . . commissary, to the rescue!

Pork shoulder picnic butt half??  Huh?  Perhaps I need to get a bit more acquainted with porcine anatomy.

I pretty much followed the video to a T.  B thought it was pretty funny that I was starting dinner before he even left for work.

According to the video, I had to put it in on high for an hour, then knock it to low.  I used that lovely hour to catch up on some TV, thanks to my good friend Hulu.

Now in Elizabeth's post, she cut the fat off the raw meat.  My little video didn't say anything about that, and I figured the fat would add some flavor(?), so I left it as is.  So easy!  And when we took the cooked piggy out, the fat just FELL OFF.  And the bones came right out too.  Slow cooking is awesome!

I did take one big peek because the thing was "popping" boiling and annoying me (and probably annoying the maintenance man fixing our sink that day as well).  I added 20 minutes, per the video -- thank God for formulas!  It's like putting the precision of baking into cooking.  Cooking requires WAY too many judgment calls for me to actually be good at it, so the more specific rules the better.

Around 6pm, I pulled the little piggy out.  It was way way too hot to use our hands to pull the pork, but two forks worked really well.  We each had a cutting board and just went for it.  If we were real Southerners, I would've had some other use for the broth/bones/fat, but pork soup sounds pretty nasty to me.  And we don't have dogs.  So we chucked it.

I love Sonny's BBQ, and I missed it dearly during our 3 years in Norfolk.  When I decided to make my own barbecue, I thought it would be good to use some of their sauce.  I added their "original" (mild) sauce to the pulled pork I put back in the cooker, then let it go for an hour while B worked out and I leisurely walked on the treadmill so I could watch my beloved "Jeopardy!" on the gym's TV.  I found some baked beans in our pantry to serve with this lovely meal and added a salad.  And of course the only drink of choice was beer (or hard cider in my case; I hate beer).  Each of us added a bit of Sonny's Sizzlin' Sweet sauce to the top for extra flavor.

 This made us dinner for two nights, and then lunch for the next few days.  We ended up going through the whole pack of buns, so the total servings came to about 8.  I love calculating just how much money we were saving because all the other times in my life I'd eaten barbecue, it was at a restaurant.

Pork shoulder/butt: $4.05
BBQ sauce: $4.00
Burger buns: $2.50
Baked beans: $1.00
Salad: about $1.00
       Total = $12.55

So, for what we would've paid for just ONE dinner (or slightly less than 2 lunches), including tax and tip, at a fine BBQ establishment, I was able to make 8 servings.  Frugality FTW!

adventures in Indian cooking

My husband B doesn't really like to play favorites.  No favorite singer, no favorite book, not even a favorite hooded sweatshirt.  But one thing I have picked up on is his extreme liking for Chicken Tikka Masala.  He discovered this dish when he was studying abroad in London during college, and his passion for it never left.  When I visited him this May on a port call in Scotland, he preferred Chicken Tikka to Haggis 3-1.  When I mentioned taking the feat of making his beloved dish on my own, my one Indian friend (wow, I've really only ever had one?!) told me to just go buy some at an Indian restaurant and pretend I made it.  She's probably right, but I'm too stubborn and frugal for any of that tomfoolery.  So last night, with him still deployed, I decided to attempt it.

Well, actually the whole process of attempting it started a few days back when I was driving all over town to find the ingredients for it.  I guess this was a good reason to finally buy coriander.  I found most of the components at my regular grocery (plain yogurt, anyone?), but the Garam Masala spice mix eluded me.  I was already out in town, so I dialed up Goog-411 (yes I live in the dark ages and am quite content without an iPhone and its accompanying invoice) and found a place called Taj Bazar on the Boulevard (what isn't on the Boulevard in this area??).  Score!  I even found some naan, so we could get the full experience here.

 My carbo-holic self could eat this stuff all day!

I decided to use a recipe featured on The Pioneer Woman's cooking blog.  I love the pictures of each step -- so great for an amateur chef like me.  I obviously did not need 6 servings, so luckily for me, this recipe was also posted at the PW's recipe-sharing community Tasty Kitchen.  And Tasty Kitchen has a nifty converter feature, so you don't even have to do any math!

Or so I thought, anyway.  The water for the rice isn’t listed on the ingredients so I had to do the math for that, along with the Garam Masala spice and some other items.  Check out my hasty fractions to figure out the water for 4 servings of rice:

 I took AP Calc for this?

Also, I would like to say that this recipe's difficulty was grossly underestimated -- it was by no means "easy"!  I haven’t been cooking for very long, and this is probably one of the most ambitious recipes I’ve tried.  Since you have 3 things going on – broiler, rice, and stovetop, I really wouldn’t call it easy.  I will say that this was my first time ever using B's rice cooker, and I'm completely SOLD.  Throwing all the ingredients in this puppy and flipping a switch?  Now that's easy!  The rest of it . . . well, notsomuch.

In the past year or so, I've discovered that I have a pretty nasty intolerance to garlic (it makes me nauseous), so I had to skip that step.  That was probably a giant mistake, due to the moisture that garlic can add.  Maybe I should've just added more butter or something in its absence.  But again, amateur chef over here.  Basically what happened was that my pan was too dry when I put in the spice mix and it kicked back at me and my sinuses, sending me into a wicked coughing fit and smoking up my little apartment.  I had invited a friend over to be part of my cooking adventure, and she was on the phone discussing wedding plans with her future mother-in-law during all this culinary commotion.  I was pretty concerned my smoke alarm would go off, but I was able to curb it by immediately grabbing the tomatoes and throwing them in (thank God I’d already opened the can, time was of the essence here!). Next time I make it, I’ll do tomatoes first, then spice and let it simmer.  Garlic problem = solved.  (I hope.)


My finished product didn’t come out in that nice orange color from the picture – it was more like a sludgy toilet brown. It might’ve had to do with how dark my Garam Masala was to begin with?  It’s sort of a deep red/brown.

 You don't even know how happy my apartment is that this does not contain curry.

Overall, it tasted decent, but a bit too spicy for my friend and I, so we chopped up a fresh tomato and threw it in and that helped a bit.  And thanks to the fabulous naan, we ate this with our fingers like real Indians!  Well, for about three minutes anyway, then we switched to forks.

I will be making this again, but with a few tweaks.  Hopefully next time I’ll get it right and not burn the place down in the process.  B and I had discussed having this for his "first night back" homecoming meal, but I think I'll be breaking it to him gently that he's getting tortellini instead.