Cheap Eats Chili

First off, I recognize the fact that my "About Me" section needs to change. It's still a little painful to think that I've done an exact 180, so if anyone has any suggestions for this section, I'll gladly take them.

Back to this post. The greatest takeaway from our Oklahoma adventure has by far been the skills I honed in the kitchen and the sourcing strategies I was forced to employ. Here in Maryland there are endless options for sourcing quality food, but my new challenge is how do it on the cheap and how to reduce weeknight cooking times to accommodate our new insane schedule.


It's fall, so chili in the crockpot is an easy go-to, but doing it right takes some preparation. Here's my ingredient breakdown and where everything came from:
*2 lbs ground beef - grass fed, farmer's market, $4/lb
*1.5 lbs kidney beans - dried, organic, Whole Foods bulk w/Living Social coupon, ~1.60/lb
*1 qt diced tomatoes - Roma, farmer's market, $2.50/lb
*2 onions - farmer's market, $2.50/lb
*2-3 green/red bell peppers - organic, CSA delivery, $3.50 for 4
*2 cups fresh corn - cut from the cob, IPM, CSA delivery, $.50/ear
*3-4 cloves garlic - organic, CSA delivery, $1/head
*salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin - my pantry
*1-2 jalopeno peppers - farmer's market, $3/lb (optional)

So we're looking at a grand total of about $20 for the pot, nothing canned, all fresh and almost all local. The most time-intensive part was the beans, which I have never cooked from dried before. I wanted to learn how, not just because dried beans are cheaper than canned, but because canned products are getting a bad rep from chemicals in the liners.

Because I didn't know about soaking overnight first, I used a quick-soak method. I brought the pot of beans to boil, then removed heat and let soak for about 2 hours before simmering them to cook with a little onion and garlic. I held onto the cooking water and froze it in ice cube trays to use later in soups and other recipes.

While the beans were cooking, I was busy chopping and pre-cooking the other fresh ingredients, so most of my Sunday afternoon was devoted to prep. I will note that the peppers and onions had already been chopped and frozen on the day I bought them at the market a few weeks back, so I just had to pull out those freezer bags. On Monday morning, while waiting for my coffee to brew, I literally dumped eveything in the crockpot. There was no room for the beans yet, so those went in when we got home later on that afternoon once everything had cooked down a bit. We took a pre-dinner walk while waiting for the beans to warm up, which I try to do with boys when the weather (and mosquitos) allow it. 

After we ate our fill, there was enough left over to freeze 4 quarts of chili. One quart gives us about 3 servings (2 grown-up dinners and a lunch...Joe still only picks at this). So the grand total per serving comes to around $1.35, and this chili is packed with nutrition and exactly ZERO chemicals and preservatives. We've had it so far as a chili and also in taco shells, which stretches out the servings even further. I'd like to bake up a pan of cornbread next time, but our new rule is to NOT run to the store for ingredients in the middle of cooking and to use what we have at home. So, I will either need to figure out how to make bread from the carton of cornmeal on the shelf, or wait til I remember to pick up a mix at the store (with a coupon, of course).  

Jello Playdough

One of my absolute favorite playthings as a kid was playdough. Who didn't love that stuff, right? I'm a purist, so I liked to take time to really enjoy popping open a fresh tube of dough and admiring the smoothness of it before mashing it into an unrecognizable blob. I was never really a fan of the colors, though, because it was IMPOSSIBLE to make a realistic looking playdough hamburger or playdough cherry pie using neon pinks and florescent greens. (Yes, I was one of those kids who made playdough food. Sue me. I was no good at making animals because I could never get uniform legs). 

Anyways, my babysitter reminded me a few months ago that now would be a great time to get Joe playing with playdough as a tactile activity, and I wanted something to break the monotony of the large plastic toys and educational videos. I found this recipe online (recopied below) for non-toxic dough made from Jello, and since it was imperative for me that it wouldn't stain hands, clothes, carpet, tile, I gave it a shot. Plus, I already had all of the ingredients in the pantry. Bonus!

Ingredients:

1 cup white flour
1/2 cup salt
2 T. cream of tartar
2 T. Vegetable oil
1 c. warm water
1 three oz. pkg. jello (any flavor)

Directions:

Combine ingredients and cook over medium heat until it thickens and pulls away from the sides of pot and becomes dull. * Note: it burns easily so don't put over too high a heat and keep stirring. Mold and knead until cool enough to touch. Store in a closed plastic bag.

  

The kneading part was, of course, my favorite even though it can be pretty hot right out of the pot. I had to work fast to get it to cool down because I had a hooting and hollering little boy aching to get his hands on the stuff.

You'll find that it makes about 2 cups per color, so be sure to share with a friend! We spent this past rainy Monday whipping up a batch for our neighbor up the street as a birthday present. The colors aren't as neon as the store-bought stuff, but it will smell like the Jello flavor the first several times you play with it. It's not really edible, unless you have a serious sodium deficiency, but it's non-toxic for sure. 

Spaghetti With Loveballs

On Sunday I gathered some of my local food purchases and several thousand cans of tomatoes and endeavored to make my Big Nonnie's spaghetti sauce with meatballs. As you might imagine, this dish is one that I grew up eating every time we visited Nonnie or she visited us. It wasn't until she and Grampa came to visit us here in Oklahoma this past spring that I realized what a huge chore it was to put on the extravaganza of the sauce, but man is it appreciated. As I cooked it this first time by myself (and yes, I had to call Nonnie to ask several questions as I went), I realized that one thing I'll never be able to replicate exactly is the feeling of family I get when I eat it. I'm sure every family has some dish like this; you can taste a lazy afternoon, hanging out with cousins, getting underfoot trying to take a taste, aunts and uncles laughing and talking, and culminating in a meal where we're all crammed around the kitchen table, extra chairs brought in from the bedrooms, and you know you're growing up when you want to linger afterwards at the table to talk with the adults instead of making a beeline for the living room and the library of Disney movies that Nonnie has on hand.

The best I can hope to do is cook it with as much love as I know it was cooked for me in the past, and hope that my own little family can taste it.

As for the actual ingredients, here goes:

Meatballs (makes about 30)

8 slices dry bread

2lbs ground beef

4 eggs

1c grated parmesan cheese

2t salt

1/4c parsley

2 cloves minced garlic

Dash pepper

 Soak bread in water for two or three minutes, then squeeze out moisture.  Combine bread with beef and rest of ingredients.  (You do this with your bare hands, wearing all of your jewelry. This is how Nonnie always did it and it's an art form.) Form small balls.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and bake balls at 350 degrees for only 20 minutes. They will finish cooking in the sauce.

 

Spaghetti Sauce (makes 4qts)

½ medium onion (~1 1/2c)

Olive oil (enough to coat pan ~ 1/3c)

2 cloves minced garlic

2 #2 ½ cans (7c) tomatoes

4 6oz cans (2 2/3c) tomato paste

2c water (use the water to “wash” the tomato cans)

2T sugar

1T salt

1/2t pepper

1T crushed oregano

 2 bay leaves

Cook onion and garlic in hot oil till tender but not brown.  Sir in the next eight ingredients (you're going to need a big pot).  Simmer, stirring occasionally for 30 minutes.  Remove bay leaves.  Add meat balls.  Continue cooking on low for another 2 hours.

What is missing from this original recipe are the following notes that were passed to me orally, and really, the dish isn't the same without them:

*Braise 2 bone-in pork chops (I used pork neck bones) and add to sauce with the meatballs.

*Add several Italian pork sausages (mostly cooked) to the sauce. 

*Add several hard-boiled eggs (peeled) to the sauce if you are serving that day. (If you haven't had spaghetti with hard-boiled eggs simmered in the sauce, YOU SHOULD.)

*Remove all meat and eggs prior to storing extra sauce (it freezes beautifully).

Be sure to have plenty of fresh Parmesan cheese on hand to dump liberally over the spaghetti, and enjoy as often as possible with good company. We recently fixed this dish at the One Acre Homestead across the street using a camp stove during the big ice storm, and then ate it by candlelight. It might have been the way we sort of improvised and gathered around the table together after a long, crazy day that really made it taste just right.

Gingerbread

One of the first Watkins family Christmas traditions ever (actually, probably one of the first traditions period) is baking gingerbread. I started the first year that Bill and I lived together, and have kept it going for the past 4 Christmases. I think I made about 70 loaves that first year. I don't know what got into me, but we brought in loaves for everyone in both of our offices, mailed them to friends and family members, and ate about 20 loaves on our own. This was before I had my stand mixer, so I stirred every batch by hand. My right arm was approximately 3 times bigger than my left by Christmas. They have been mailed to several states and both Iraq and Afghanistan with fairly positive feedback across the board. I've recently tried experimenting with lower-fat and gluten-free versions, but I still have a long way to go in those departments.

As the years go by, the numbers of loaves being mailed out have dwindled due to astronomical postage prices from Oklahoma to everywhere else in the world, so I have decided to reproduce my recipe here in case readers want to make their own. A word of warning: if you are a bah-humbug type of Christmas avoider, do NOT make this bread. It will make your house smell like ginger and spice and everything nice and you'll have visions of sugarplums dancing in your head as you sing carols uncontrollably at the top of your lungs. Consider yourself warned.

Watkins Family Gingerbread
The original recipe that I print out and tape to my kitchen cabinets every year can be found here, and I only slightly modify it as I go. I've made so many batches of this stuff that I don't really need the recipe, but it doesn't feel like Christmas until it's taped up. One of these days I'll actually take the time to print it out on nice Christmas-y paper and frame it so it actually looks decorative instead of like I'm cramming for finals.

I start by creaming a cup of butter with a cup of brown sugar until light and fluffy:


Add 2 eggs and beat well. Then combine a cup of molasses (unsulfured) with a teaspoon of baking soda and a cup of boiling water. It will smell, sound, and look like science class:

The original recipe says to dump this in with the creamed butter mixture, but I like to add it alternatively in thirds with the flour for a better consistency. Thank you, Alton Brown, for teaching me that one. Add a total of 2 and 3/4 cups of flour alternatively with the molasses mixture to the creamed butter, with the mixer on low to avoid hot splashes of molasses. Voice of experience here.

Add 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and get excited. It's spice time. The original recipe calls for 4 tsp ginger, 2 tsp cinnamon, and 1 tsp each of allspice and cloves, but I dump at least a tbsp and a half of ginger in there, a full tbsp of cinnamon and heaping tsp of allspice and cloves, plus a pinch extra if I feel like it. I go through a LOT of spice. That's why when I stumbled upon a spice sale at my grocery store, I freaked out. A tiny jar of ground cloves is normally $8, but I got mine on sale for $.99! A Christmas miracle? I think so. I also have started zesting some orange into the mix to add brightness to the flavor.

Anyway, when you're all mixed up, you'll look like this:


Here's where I'll break and let you know that I used to make the lemon glaze as directed in the original recipe. It was good, but very very messy and sticky. This year I experimented with sugaring the pan and making a cinnamon-sugar topping, like I did in the Amish Friendship Bread earlier this fall, and had AMAZING results. I can't explain the tasty, I can only testify that it is mighty.

Once your pans are sugared and your oven is 350 degrees, fill 'em up. Sprinkle a generous helping of the cinnamon sugar mix on top of the loaves and toss them in the oven. It takes around an hour, give or take, but I never set the timer. At this point I can tell by smell, and I check with a cake tester. The finished product will look like this:


Well hello, you. Pull them out and let them cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes, then remove from the pans and allow to cool completely. If you can. These wrap up and freeze VERY nicely, obviously mail really well, and generally taste better the second day. Now, before you start thinking that I'm some Christmas fairy or something, I have to be brutally honest and admit that my kitchen looks thusly when I'm finished:


It's worth it. Trust me. Remember, you're going to be so busy singing carols loud enough for the neighbors to hear that you won't care about cleaning up.

Soup Saturday

Things are CRAZY at our house this time of year, especially since our Christmas guests are going to start arriving on the 17th--5 days! And with this being Joe's first Christmas, I want to make sure we (meaning me) have plenty of time to soak up the family time and not worry about cooking or chores. I'm splurging to have my house professionally cleaned and I'm stocking the freezer with lots of homemade soups for lunches.

Today I'm cooking up a beef & barley vegetable soup in the crockpot. It's fairly self-explanatory: beef, barley, carrots, green beans, onions, garlic, and whatever spices and herbs I have handy.



On the stove I have a new favorite cooking: butternut squash w/bacon soup. This soup proves the rule that you can add bacon to anything and my husband will eat it. But despite the tasty baconness, it's also low-calorie and nutritious. I can't find the original recipe I used, so I'll reproduce here.

Use 2 large halved butternut squashes with the pulp and seeds removed. Cook covered in the microwave in an inch of water for 15 minutes, until soft.

Meanwhile, cook 6-8 slices of bacon in a large pot and remove. Set aside for later. In the bacon grease, saute an onion and 3 cloves of garlic. Scoop out squash flesh and add to pot. Add enough water (or chicken stock, but this adds sodium and calories) to cover and let simmer until the flavors are blended. I usually take a potato masher to this to help integrate the flavors and break down the squash, but you can skip that.

Pour the soup into a large blender and pulse until smooth. If you will be freezing the soup, add the bacon back in so this gets chopped up into the soup. If serving immediately, then just crush the bacon on top of the soup.


This soup freezes so well and is very hearty. You can add things like cream or other seasonings to it when served, but I keep it simple to keep it diet-friendly. Yes, it's hard to imagine anything cooked in bacon grease as diet-friendly, but this is only 77 calories per 1-cup serving. Can't beat that!

Okay, back to the kitchen I go. Besides baking for gifts, I still need to stuff some peppers for the freezer and I'm running out of thyme!

Get it? Just a little kitchen dork humor for you.

Amish Friendship Bread & Challenge

First of all, have you ever had this stuff? Um, wow. Pretty much anything that is COMPLETELY ENCRUSTED IN CINNAMON AND SUGAR is just about my idea of heaven.

Last weekend I was visiting friends and family in Maryland & Virginia, and my college roommate Jessica brought me a loaf and a starter of Amish Friendship Bread, which I had never heard of. The bread was so tasty that it was pretty much devoured within 24 hours. The bread starter, though, looked like a ziploc-bag filled with glue.

Jessica gave me a printout with instructions to "mush the bag" every day for 10 days, and on the 5th day to add flour, sugar, and water. (Click here for recipe and instructions.) On Day 10, you add another round of flour, sugar, and water and then divide the starter into 4ths--one to keep and bake (makes 2 loaves) and 3 to give away.
Willing to do anything to have more of this amazing stuff, I actually packed the ziploc bag into my suitcase and flew it back to Oklahoma, where I faithfully "mushed the bag" and watched as it started to blow up like a balloon due to the fermenting yeast mixture:
I let the air out and watched it fill up again over the next day. Definitely a fun recipe to make with kids, or really juvenile adults like me. On the 10th day, I was pretty much salivating to get the batter mixed and into the oven. True to the recipe's promise, one cup of the starter mixture made 2 loaves of bread, or in our case, 2 servings. Seriously, there is no such thing as portion control with this stuff.
You could find a recipe for the starter online (which I did and made--see below) but the neat thing about this recipe is that it is theoretically started in one person's kitchen and then shared amongst several layers of friends and family. For example, as I was baking my bread, I knew that on the same day my best friends Jessica and Diane were baking theirs because we each had a portion of the same starter.

WatSourced Challenge

Now, in the spirit of Thanksgiving and slightly caught up in the pay-it-forwardness of this recipe, I decided to quadruple the starter recipe I found online so I could bring it back east with me over the holiday to share with friends and family. Mistake. English majors should not try to do big math, especially with sacred Amish secrets. I ended up with not 4, but TEN starter bags (and actually should have been 12, but 2 of the bags are fuller than the others). YIKES!
I have some lovely folks in mind that I am planning to pass some of these to, but now there will be no way for me to know how these all turned out down the road when the starter starts really getting passed around.

So. My plan is to hand out the recipe with this blog address. I'm hoping that whoever ends up with one of my original starters (made with love in my own kitchen!), they will come back to this post and leave a comment letting me know where their kitchen is in the world, how the bread turned out, and if they had any modifications or suggestions. It will be like our own little virtual Amish village. This leads me to add 2 addendums:
1. Just for fun, if you've made this recipe before, even if you don't receive one of MY starters, let us know how it went for you.
2. If you don't feel like searching the internet and want to know how I made my starter (I did make a few tweaks) just post a comment with your email address.
Happy baking!

Amish Friendship Bread recipe for printing

This recipe and starter comes from an Amish tradition of community sharing and delicious food. Each starter has a unique journey that begins in one kitchen, then is passed from one kitchen to the next, collecting stories and beginning traditions along the way. Each starter is alive, much like our relationships, and must be taken care of for 10 days before it is ready to be divided, baked, and shared. It makes a wonderful gift because you can give a loaf of sweet, cinnamony bread and the starter that it came from.

This particular starter began in a kitchen in Oklahoma to be shared at Thanksgiving. To read about the origins of this starter and to see all of the different kitchens it has visited, go to http://watsourced.blogspot.com/2009/11/amish-friendship-bread-challenge.html, and be sure to post a comment yourself! Enjoy.

Day 1: Do nothing, this is the day you receive the batter. The bag is dated.
Day 2: Mush the bag
Day 3: Mush the bag
Day 4: Mush the bag
Day 5: Mush the bag
Day 6: Add to the bag :1 C. flour, 1 C. sugar, and 1 C. cold milk. Mush the bag.
Day 7: Mush the bag
Day 8: Mush the bag
Day 9: Mush the bag
Day 10: Follow the directions below:
1. Pour the entire contents of the bag into a nonmetal bowl.
2. Add 1 C. flour, 1 C. of sugar, 1 C. of milk
3. Measure out 4 separate batters (1 cup each) into 4 Ziplock (1 gallon bags). Keep a starter bag for yourself and give 3 to friends with a copy of the recipe.
Note: If you keep a starter for yourself you will be baking every 10 days.

Baking Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. To the remaining batter in the bowl add: 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of oil, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of sugar, 2 tsp. of cinnamon, 1 tsp. of vanilla, 1 1/2 tsp. of baking powder, 1/2 tsp. of baking soda, 1/2 tsp. of salt, 2 cups of flour, 1 large box of vanilla pudding.
3. Grease 2 large loaf pans .
4. Sugar the pans with a mixture of 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon. Pour the batter evenly into the pans and top with the remaining cinnamon sugar mixture.
5. Bake for approx. 1 hour or until toothpick inserted into loaves comes out clean.

Hints: Do not use any metal spoons or bowls. They will interact negatively with the yeast in the starter. Your bag will fill with air like a balloon—this is normal. Just open the bag and release the excess air as necessary. Feel free to add fruits, nuts, different flavored pudding, or chocolate chips to your bread just before baking.

Pumpkins!!

Part of being environmentally responsible AND being healthy is eating seasonally. I've been trying to actually start watching the weekly sales ad from the local grocery store for produce sales. Late summer and early fall seems to be the best time for fresh local produce, so I've been trying to stock up on fresh veggies and batch cook meals for the freezer.

I've never really cooked squash before, and I experimented with it a bit to make some baby food for my son. When it went on sale for $.55 per lb, I got as many different kinds as I could. The pumpkin is what I experimented with the most. It's very important to get "pie pumpkins" or small, dense pumpkins--NOT the big carving pumpkins. Pie pumpkins are full of flavor and nutrients, whereas the carving pumpkins are not good for cooking (though you can roast the seeds--I like to toss mine in Old Bay, cuz I'm a good MD girl).

I started by breaking down the pumpkins, scooping out the pulp and seeds, and roasting them in an inch of water in my Dutch oven for about 45 minutes.



Scooping hot pumpkin flesh out of the skin is not quite something I've mastered, so I am open to suggestions. After the flesh is scooped out, I mash it with a hand mixer and then it is a ready ingredient for a number of tasty dishes. I'll talk about the top three below.

Spiced Pumpkin Butter with Pecans

Using this recipe from cooks.com, I attempted to try a butter full of autumny flavor, even though I've never cooked or eaten pumpkin butter before. It was not an awful first try, but next time around I'll follow the directions regarding the orange zest, instead of throwing all of it in.

First, I added spice, honey, and orange zest/juice to the pumpkin mash and put the whole mixture in the crockpot.


I let it cook down all day. The house smelled AMAZING--I'm telling you, even if you don't end up eating this stuff, I recommend making a batch the morning of a holiday get-together just for the awesome smell. At the end of the day, I added a bit more mash to freshen up the pumpkin flavor. Check out the color difference after a day of cooking:While the fresh mash was being integrated into the mixture, I toasted some fresh pecans. The place to get these is in the PRODUCE SECTION of the grocery store, not in dusty, old bags that they put in the baking aisle.
These got chopped and mixed into the butter (those that survived my munching--so good right out of the oven!). I think if you're going to do something with the butter right away, definitely reserve some of these as a topping.

Current wisdom says that you can not home can pumpkin because there is not enough acid to keep bacteria from growing. However, pumpkin (and pumpkin butter) can stay refrigerated for up to 6 months and frozen for up to a year (so sayeth the internet). So far my favorite use for this stuff is as a spread for fresh, warm brownies:
The chocolate compliments the pumpkiny-citrus flavor SOOOO well. Yum!

Pumpkin Ravioli


So, after eating a million pumpkin-butter-topped brownies, it may be time to cut back on some calories, right? This recipe for a pumpkin-stuffed ravioli is very healthy and is a few hundred calories less than a traditional stuffed pasta dish. Because it's made with the flavorful parmesan (albeit a relatively small amount), it takes on a cheesy flavor and the texture is similar, too.

I made a huge batch using soy wonton wrappers (found in the refrigerated section of the produce aisle). I mixed up the pumpkin mash, parmesan cheese, and a bit of black pepper. I spooned a heaping teaspoon onto each wrapper:
Then I moistened the edges:

And I folded the whole thing into these cute little envelopes, placed on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper:
Granted, there are many different ways these can be folded up, and these need to be tight or they come loose while being boiled. I was able to throw the baking sheet in the freezer and then transfer the raviolis into a freezer bag once they were hardened. I made about 100 raviolis. A moment or two in a pot of boiling water is all it takes to cook these, toss in a little herb butter, and you have a healthy, seasonal, original dinner!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins


Perhaps the simplest, tastiest use for the pumpkin mash has to be this awesome recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. There are 2 secret ingredients that make a huge difference. Secret flavor: cinnamon. It perfectly complements the chocolate so that you don't have to overwhelm the muffin with them. Secret texture: yogurt. It makes these muffins so smooth and velvety without the fat of oil, and adds a nice boost of calcium and protein, too.


I used half white flour and half wheat for an extra nutritional boost, and broke out my mini-muffin pan for built-in portion control. These freeze beautifully, if they last long enough to make it into the freezer. I actually handed these out on Halloween (to families we know) and they were much more popular (and healthier!) than candy.