Cooking for the week and making it up as I go.

So today, I woke up in the mood to cook!  Matt is going to be working extra hours for the next few weeks and I don't to get behind and start eating out. So I cooked all day!  I made two casseroles, 2 meals worth of potato/corn chowder, 2 meals worth of white chicken chili, two loaves of bread, and baked oatmeal for dinner tonight!  I froze one casserole and half of each soup and will freeze one loaf of bread.  Having 3 meals frozen and 3 in the fridge improves my outlook vastly!! 

The fun part of this was I made up a couple recipes as I went. Yup, I invented a Bean and Rice casserole and the potato/corn chowder I improvised from scratch rather than using premade soups.  I will post both the recipes for the potato/corn chowder.  I think I may hold off on posting the bean/rice casserole til after we eat it. It smelled really good but we are not eating it til tomorrow.

Last week we discovered that having frozen flat bread pizza crusts in the freezer is a kin to having premade frozen pizzas on hand and taste a whole lot better. So tomorrow I plan to make some more pizza crusts to freeze.  Keeping cheese, pepperoni, and pizza sauce on hand is easy and in expensive. 

Here's to planning ahead and hoping my latest inventions are edible!! LOL

Meal Board

Okay, So it has been FOREVER since I posted anything! Sorry!  This post is not actually a recipe but a little tip I recently found that I want to share.  I found an app for my Ipod touch that I am just figuring out but absolutely loving already! It is a meal/grocery planner. You can calendar meals for up to a month at a time and then it will generate a grocery list for you based on what you have in your plan! It will also estimate cost and has a coupon feature for those of you that coupon! You enter each recipe with full ingredients lists and instructions, makes it a nice little on the go recipe box too!  It is going to take a while to get all my recipes and usual side dishes in, but it does have an online recipe entering site that will make it faster. Once the are all in I will be able to create meal plans super fast!! It is called mealboard and was only $3.99 in the app store, I really think it is going to be worth it!!  Just wanted to share!  I don't know if this is available for Droid devices, sorry.

Making Buttermilk- minus the cow

A lot of recipes call for buttermilk, now in many recipes you can substitute regular milk, but really if a recipe is calling for it, it will really taste the best with buttermilk.  So what do you do if you don't keep buttermilk on hand, and you don't have a cow? You can create it, or more accurately soured milk.  Many of you may know this trick, but it was one my mom told me that I have found useful on many occasions, so I thought I would share here.  By adding lemon juice to regular milk (2%, whole doesn't matter I don't think the fat free would work.....) Anyway. It creates a equivalent for butter milk. The ratio is 1 cup milk to 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

The Yeast of the Problem

Yeast can make you or break you! It is the difference between bread like a rock and bread like a feather! The most critical thing I learned is that Salt controls the yeast!! That's right if you put in too much salt it will kill it! and if you put in the right amount of yeast but you put it directly on the yeast it will also kill it. But on the upside, if you forget to put the salt in all together your bread will rise quite fast! =) So, when making bread add the salt after you have added some of the flour to protect your yeast.  It also bears saying that water temp is a huge factor. Too warm or too cold either one will kill the yeast. I try to get mine just warmer than room temp. and I also warm my ingredients slightly so that the yeast doesn't get shocked when added.  One more important note. It needs to be room temp before you add the water, this is assuming you are keeping your yeast in the fridge, and you should as it will last longer and stay fresher.  Okay, I think that completes my dissertation on yeast. I hope it makes sense. Please add if you have more info!