Catching up

Well, so many things have happened since the last blog. Lester's father is back in the hospital with CHF. I drove with my dad to my brother's house in Wichita, KS to visit his cousin for a day. We talked alot about family history and got some new stories. Had a great time talking just with dad on the drive. For a man of few words we were able to keep up the conversation for the whole 6.5 hour trip there and then again on the way home. It was wonderful, you will have to ask me in person to elaborate. Today in church there were 6 baby blessings! and there are at least 8 more women pregnant. They really know how to reproduce in my ward. We also booked a vacation just before his father ended up in the hospital. A 7 day cruise out of Galveston the week of April 11th. Thankfully, Lester's sister will come stay with his dad while we are gone and as long as Pa is stable, we WILL be going. We missed vacation last fall because Pa got sick. We don't want to do that again if possible.
I haven't cooked much or kept up with the budget but the new month has started and I am getting back on track.

Weekend full of icing and cake crumbs

I was happily asked to make a wedding cake for an anniversary/ward fireside. I baked the cakes during the week and put them in the freezer. Saturday morning I went shopping and by the time I got home I was feeling really sick. A few hours and tylenol later and I was up to making 4 batches of icing and finishing the cake. It wasn't beautiful (it's been a while since making anything fancy) but it was finished and neatly boxed up for sunday night. Sunday morning just before leaving for church my husband said, "Oh no, did you look at your cake?" The layers crumbled under the weight and I had a pile of crumbs. I wanted to cry but I didn't really have the energy. Oh well, time for plan B. Plan B consisted of many cupcakes made by me and few friends and a few more batches of icing. When we arrived at the church I quickly iced them. A couple of tiered servers and nobody was missing the cake. I have twenty pounds of crumbs and icing if anyone is interested. :)

Meal Planning

So I am still having a problem with planning...anything but specifically our menu. I decided to make each day a theme and then I could mix and match according to what we feel like eating. So here is what I have come up with.

Saturday: Pork or Chicken

Sunday: Beef

Monday: Soup/Sandwich/leftovers

Tuesday: Temple night (we are not home)

Wednesday: Fish

Thursday: Eggs

Friday: Toss up -- general two of these a month will be eating out days

Then I started listing favorite meals that are relatively easy.

Pork or Chicken:
fajitas
enchiladas
pork chops
pulled pork
ham
baked chicken
chicken, sausage and potatoes
chicken pot pie
fried chicken
chicken stir fry

Beef:
roast beef
stew
goulash
sloppy joes
beef chunks and gravy
steak
meatloaf
enchiladas/fajitas
hamburgers
tacos/taco salad
chicken fried steak

Eggs:
Frittatas
Spinach salad with eggs and bacon
Breakfast tacos
Breakfast for dinner in all it's varieties

Fish:
Baked fish (cod, salmon, roughy)
Tuna noodle casserole
Linguini with clam sauce
Shrimp scampi
Fish cakes (all varieties)

Soup/sandwich:
Hamburger soup
Beef bulgar soup
chicken noodle soup
sausage/potato soup
Broccoli Cheese soup
chili
Reuben sandwiches
grilled cheese

Toss up:
Pizza
Beans and cornbread
Hot dogs/Hot dog hash
Macaroni and Meatballs

I need some more ideas for Fish, Pork and Chicken. My guys won't want soup for after say April so we will move on to something more seasonal.

Biscuits at the Beasleys

I am a fairly good cook and a better baker, so I am embarrassed to admit when I got married at the age of 32, I thought biscuits came from a can, cornbread from a jiffy box and I did not own a cast iron skillet. Despite these deficiencies, my native-Texan Husband married me and I proceeded to perfect biscuits and cornbread. This week was Lindsey Lamarche's turn to bake with Sister Beasley and much to my husband's delight, she asked to learn how to make biscuits. Here is our recipe.
2 C. flour ( half wheat if you like)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1TBSP sugar (opt)

Pulse above in food processor with 6 TBSP butter, when it resembles coarse cornmeal add 1 C buttermilk and pulse until just combined. Let's talk about buttermilk for a minute. I think it is great in food but I cannot get past the smell to drink it. It is expensive and since I don't bake biscuits alot, it was going bad on me. I ordered some powdered buttermilk from emergency essentials, reconstituted it and baked biscuits and cornbread with it. I have found it works better to add the 2.5 TBSP of powdered buttermilk to the dry stuff and add the 1 cup water at the end and that is what we did. BTW, it also tastes better to drink than regular powdered milkbut it is considerably more expensive than the cannery milk.
Turn out onto heavily floured hands and surface because it will be very wet still. Just gently kneed it around in the flour until the surface of dough is no longer sticky. Transfer to 10 inch cast iron skillet (or greased cake pan if you haven't discovered the beauty of cast iron yet) press evenly into pan and score in wedges(like cutting a pizza) with a well floured edge, I like to use my bench scraper( the white handled thing in Lindsey's hand) but any spatula will work, and bake at 450 degrees for 12-15 minutes. They will break apart at the scored edges so you don't have to roll and cut and take the chance of making your dough tough.

Baking with Sister Beasley

Today is Sunday. We had an uplifting fast and testimony meeting, an enlightening sunday school lesson on Noah and our modern-day arks, and a spiritually moving lesson on having a gospel-sharing home. Came home from church and looked through the coupons which "inspired" me to make brownies. Not from scratch just the Betty Crocker-and-me kind. I did use powdered eggs and water and they were just as good as if I used fresh. Then I took as afternoon nap. I don't usually take those but the history channel will do that to me. ha ha
Anyway, this evening I got a call from an eight year old girl from church. It went like this. "Sister Beasley, this is Angela Lamarche I have an assignment for school and mom is going visiting teaching and Dad doesn't know how to make cookies, Can I come make snickerdoodles with you?" I said sure and asked if she had a recipe or if I should find one and she said I could find one. This gave me the perfect opportunity to try this snickerdoodle recipe using half wheat flour and powdered eggs. She came over with her box which contained her assignment wearing her little sunday dress and I said, "Your going to need an apron" and she pulled one out of her little box that her crafty mother had made. It was beautiful. She had a social studies assignment where she was supposed to take something that interested her(cooking) and find 4-5 primary sources and 1-2 secondary sources and put them in a box. It was hard to decide what a secondary source would be for cooking but we decided that her own personal recipe book would be one. Anyway, I got to show her how we grind wheat to make flour and the difference between whole wheat flour and the bleached white flour from the store. She measured all the ingredients and I worked the mixer. I scooped the cookies and she rolled them in the cinnamon and sugar and we baked them. All the while she was attentive and talkative and it was a delightful evening and the cookies came out GREAT. I told her she could come bake with me anytime she wanted. I had a couple of these little recipe card holders put away in my gift closet so I labeled one with her name and told her to keep all her tried-n-true recipes in it. I wrote out the instructions for this cookie and put it in there and you would have thought I gave her a real treasure. When I took her home, I told her dad she could come anytime and bake with me. Then her older sister spoke up and said if she had a book like that she would put a recipe for ranger cookies in it and did I know how to make biscuits? When I said yes, she turned to her dad and said "Can I go next time??" Her dad said maybe we will have to make it a tradition and baking with Sister Beasley day was created. I never think to take pictures. If this takes off I promise to take pictures but so you can see the recipe book I got one ready for Lindsey and took a picture for you.

Went shopping, found a deal

Okay, I admit I was shopping. But it was for decorations for a church function and while I was in walmart I found these great containers for cheap($3 for both). They are the snap kind with the rubber gaskets and a pour spout. The large one is 16 cups and will hold a 5 pound bag of flour (if you buy it that way :))


I am very lucky to have a large pantry but I also have alot of different products like dry milk, dry eggs, different kinds of flour and grains and I needed a better organization plan than this.



So I got busy cleaning and transferring things. Now it looks like this! I am always looking for new ways to store stuff. Though this looks good. All the same sized number 10 cans would have worked too!

I'm a "stuff" girl

So I am sitting here intoxicated by the aroma of fresh wheat bread(3 loaves and some rolls since I ran out of bread pans) pricked with a guilty thought from our sunday lessons. Someone said the three most loving words you can say is "I love you" and the four most loving words are "we can't afford it". You see, I have been procrastinating writing the budget. It shouldn't feel like such a chore.
I guess I should explain the extent of my financial education. My parents started with nothing and still have most of it. The concepts I remember learning were things like pay the mortgage, the light bill, buy groceries and then split up the rest or pay a dollar down and a dollar a day for the rest of your life(for medical bills). Many times the question wasn't how much but how much per month. Although my parents didn't have their first new car until they were in their 40's, I somehow thought I would always have a car payment. In the 28 years I have been making money my idea of a budget has evolved. When I first started making money I spent it almost as quickly with no thought to savings. They some fool gave me a credit card. All hopes of savings were now gone because I had to wonder how I was going to pay those fool things off. After 6-8 years of shear stupidity with money and moving in and out of my parents home, I had racked up about 2-3K of credit debt and a healthy car payment. I was credit debt free when I graduated from nursing school due in part to my parents generously allowing me to live home rent free during school. THANKS MOM AND DAD!
I got a good job but continued the destructive behavior of debt. When I married Lester, he had all the money and I had all the stuff. He came from a saving family. They bought all their vehicles with cash!! Can you believe it? Me neither. Anyway he never wants "stuff" but never turns down "stuff" I get him either. Due to our double income we were comfortable so my concept of budget was pay all the bills and spend the extra. After all it was extra, right?? Unfortunately, my husband has abdicated all responsibility for money to me. POOR LESTER! Probably a year or two ago I was introduced to this budgeting concept called financial peace. Dave makes alot of sense and we quickly paid off the cars and are saving for when the cars need to be replaced, however, I still couldn't master the spend all the money on paper on purpose concept. So this afternoon I have again written the budget. That was the easy part. The hard part will be sticking to it. But as they say, "No pain, No gain". We have budgeted in a great vacation this year(Lester wants to go on an Alaskan cruise) but I will want to spend more money fixing the yard up come spring and since we aren't up to the labor, it will be costly. I also love to buy stuff for the house and fabric for quilting. I have way more projects than time but it doesn't eliminate the desire to have those beautiful and exotic textiles for "just in case". I will have to give up my monthly trip to the ivy cottage in garland who tempts me to come see what's new and get my "free candle". My husband encourages me to go get my free candle and then asks how much it cost us when I get back. Get thee behind me satan!

Food is Love

So, one of my biggest loves in life is food. I'll admit it is NOT a healthy relationship but it has always been a big part of my life. You see, I come form an italian family. Okay, I will admit mom has another nationality but she firmly embraced the italian life when marrying my dad. If you are italian, you truly know what this means. If you are not, visit one. Don't worry, they will treat you like one of the familyand likely invite you to "mangia".
I was raised to believe if you had a full pantry you were rich. So it wasn't hard to embrace the concept of food storage as a principle of self reliance. I dutifully went about the task of collecting food that would store a long time in hopes that I would never have to use it. As time has gone by, I now realize that without learning how to use what I have, it is not making me self reliant, just a hoarder. So I have committed myself to trying at least one new recipe per month using food storage items. I have found a lot of great online resources and I highly recommend Crystal Godfrey's book, "I can't believe it's food storage" and her website www.everydayfoodstorage.net if you are looking for a way to get started. I recently learned that you can substitute cooked beans for oil or butter in baked goods. Doesn't sound very appealing but I gave it a try. I made whole wheat carrot cake muffins with brown sugar, cooked white beans, powdered eggs, crushed pineapple, diced carrots rehydrated from dry, whole wheat flour, raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, salt and baking soda.
They were really pretty good. No fat, moist, protein packed and full of fiber. Who could ask for anything more??