Early dinners

Since I've worked all weekend, and closing shift, we've had hot meals earlier in the day to get "real food" into me before I head to Target café.

Yesterday we had an early lunch of leftovers, including eggplant, green beans and vegetarian piggies in the blanket. For dinner, at 4 before I headed off, my husband made spaghetti and meatballs.

We froze some meatballs for later use.

Today, at noon, we're enjoying vegetarian and gluten free channa dal from a package to which I added loads of spinach and hearty brown rice. The beverage was Very Vanilla Silk.

Speaking of Target, I finished my work on time last night for the first time in ages. The dishwasher has been broken for about a month and washing piles of dirty cast iron pizza pans has been fun to say the least.

But last night I got done on time and could buy some household items. Sadly Target had no more canning lids.

But I did pick up the following:
- ocean spray 64 ounce bottle of cran-raspberry juice, on sale for $2.39
- Market Pantry pasta sauce, one traditional and one garden vegetable. $1.32 each. I have no intention of eating them. I don't use jarred sauce. They are for my father-in-law who read in Consumer Reports that the Target brand is the best spaghetti sauce. After he told me this four times, I'm buying him some.
- archer farms organic hibiscus tea, $2.99
- Tazo decaf chai tea bags, $2.99
- archer farms sea salt caramel hot chocolate mix, $4.49 (splurge but the child has to have something yummy for the occasional crisp fall morning)
- sugar, $2.69
- Silk vanilla almond milk, $3.19
- Silk very vanilla soy milk, $2.99
- Breyers waffle cone burst ice cream, 2 cartons on clearance for $3.07 each

Total: $30.51
Minus team member discount: -3.06
RedCard: -1.37
Tax: 12 cents
New total: $26.20

Spaghetti and meatballs

I thawed out the last of our ground beef when I got home from work last night so my husband used the Betty Crocker cookbook to make meatballs.

Pasta Basilique

The title of this post and this meal is inspired by my favorite movie, a French film called, The Closet.

The main character makes spaghetti with fresh basil every time his teenaged son comes to visit.

Tonight I prepared some spaghetti (mixing whole wheat with regular white).

I heated two small cans of plain tomato sauce, one half teaspoon four color pepper, two teaspoons garlic powder and about 1 cup fresh basil leaves from my garden, torn into large strips.

Serve with grated Romano and shredded asagio.

Spaghetti and sausage

Easy dinner tonight. We went out to eat at Little Italy Food Center in Pohatcong last night. I brought home about 2/3 of the sausage in my spaghetti and sausage. So, since my daughter and I are heading to Philadelphia tomorrow and won't be cooking, I thought we could make our own spaghetti and add the leftover sausage. It was a hit.

Stir fry with seitan

This is the basic recipe for a basic Asian style sesame sauce:

For a half-pound of meat, or equivalent veggies, mix

• 1 clove crushed garlic
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce (I use low sodium)
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1-2 teaspoons water
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger

Marinate whatever you wish to season. I would recommend leaving it in the sauce for a while.

Now from here, I'm making some spaghetti noodles because I'm out of rice. I'll fry them and make them like lo mein. I'm using the seitan I made yesterday as my meat. And california blend vegetables, which I plan to marinate in whatever sauce the wheat meat (seitan) doesn't soak up.

Improvised Lo Mein 2

After that huge breakfast (plus popcorn at the theatre I hear) my daughter says she's not hungry. My husband says he is. I'm honestly not sure.

But I do know we could use some veggies...

So I plan to recreate "improvised lo mein" which my daughter and I had for lunch one day in August, using some leftovers in the freezer from my mother-in-law's asian pork dish. As it's November, we probably need to use those up anyway.

The original post:

http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/08/improvised-lo-mein.html

Let's gather some ingredients:

• Sandwich size freezer bag with my mother-in-law's frozen Asian-style pork.
• spaghetti
• sesame oil
• sesame seeds
• chow mein noodles
• steam-in-bag stir-fry vegetables, Giant store brand
• low sodium soy sauce
• One clove garlic sliced thin
• Le Creuset pan (cooking Asian style in the French skillet, weird, n'est-ce pas?)

Craving for egg rolls... Okay... egg rolls not on the menu... move on...

Step one: prepare veggies in microwave, set aside. Thaw frozen leftovers in microwave set aside. Boil water for spaghetti. Heat about 1.5 tablespoons sesame oil in large skillet to toast generous amount of sesame seeds.

Step two: When water boils, break a handful of spaghetti in half and add to the water. When the skillet is hot and oil is even across bottom of skillet, add about three tablespoons sesame seeds and cook them until a tad browned and reduce heat. Add garlic and cook on low heat.

Step three: when spaghetti is desired 'doneness,' add to skillet and drizzle with another tablespoon sesame oil. Stir into sesame seeds and garlic, then spread in even layer. Cook on low or medium heat until the noodles fry a little and get slightly brown/crispy. Then add vegetables and leftovers sitting in reserve. I would do the plain veggies first so they have a chance to get some of that sesame oil before you add the seasoned leftovers. I did add about two teaspoons of soy sauce when I added the veggies.

Step four: now, this is the tricky part. You may need to add sauce if the mi xture is dry. What kind of sauce? That's a personal preference.

I didn't end up making sauce. I simply stirred well and served with the chow mein noodles.

Improvised Lo Mein

My mother-in-law made her Chinese-style pork with vegetables a while ago and we froze some. I am extremely low on groceries, so I thawed some for lunch. I plan on cooking some spaghetti, after breaking it in half, then sautéeing the spaghetti in sesame oil and sesame seeds and then serving the leftovers over that. That's as creative as I can get right now...

Mac N Bacon

Oh, the evils...

I never made it to the store to get the remaining ingredients for zucchini/crabbiless cakes. Although ironically, my friend Gayle made them at her house. Tomorrow here I hope...

We have no vegetable in the house, except the 4.5 pound zucchini. We have no flour. No fruit. Very limited resources. I have $70 in my wallet designated for grocery shopping but I haven't made it there.

Oops.

So we made our last box of spaghetti and made mac and cheese by adding a pack of generic cheese mix from a box of mac and cheese I stole the noodles from a while ago, our last tablespoon of real butter, some raw milk, and (gasp!) Velveeta. Someone gave me the Velveeta. I did not buy Velveeta. Let me repeat: I did not buy Velveeta.

That would have been bad enough, from a nutrition standpoint but... I added smoked bacon. Also from the farm. 1/3 of the package went in the pasta, 1/3 in the fridge for sandwiches later, and 1/3 in the freezer.

We topped with garlic pepper and served.

Gayle's fundraising dinner

Last night was Gayle's fundraising dinner. She's walking in two fundraising/awareness events in October to benefit breast cancer research. One weekend she'll walk 40 miles in NYC and 60 miles in Philadelphia the next.

Last night she hosted her Italian dinner: real salad, rolls with garlic butter, cheesy shells, spaghetti with red sauce, spaghetti with meat sauce, sausage meatballs, and ziti with or without meat.

I manned the bake sale table. A difficult position for me.

I spent $54: $30 for our family to eat, $12 on raffle tickets for prizes, and $12 on baked goods. I won a $10 gift card for the Giant Supermarket. I brought home a pumpkin roll and put it in the freezer. We ate some mini cheesecakes while there. I bought a Harvey Wallbanger cake out of curiosity, some cookies for my daughter, and two big old brownies to make sundaes of at some point.

Then Gayle gave us some leftover clam sauce and several pounds of dry spaghetti and some lettuce.

So, today my husband worked from 11-4. So we had a small meal at ten so he would make it through the day. At noon, I ate the leftovers from my daughter's meal when we went out to dinner Thursday.

Creative reuse is half the battle when you're watching the budget.

My daughter had a salad for lunch, with the matchstick carrots and broccoli from her party last week, topped with some ring bologna and colby jack (colby jack also from the party) for protein. Then we had a treat.

I took two smallish cookies... larger than a half dollar but not as big around as a drinking glass, and took some of the Birthday Cake Batter ice cream also leftover from her birthday party and made a little ice cream sandwich. I topped with whipped cream.

I did something similar for myself but I used the Harvey Wallbanger cake.

Ice Cream Man and Spaghetti

My daughter had a meltdown today when I told her we didn't have money for the ice cream man. She must have cried for ten minutes. A little while after she settled down, I offered her an ice cream cone Mommy-style and she enthusiastically said yes. I warned her this would be the best ice cream cone ever.

I started with a wafer cone, the kind my father-in-law brings. I packed in some vanilla bean ice cream and lined the top with Goldfish honey grahams, a gift from a neighbor who visited the Pepperidge Farm Outlet. I spooned on some butterscotch topping, added another portion of ice cream and topped the whole mess with rainbow sprinkles.

My daughter is so over the ice cream man.

For dinner, I wanted to use the leftover beef BBQ. My daughter had eaten most of it for lunch yesterday. I opted for spaghetti. We made meat sauce with the beef BBQ and then served with grated parmesan and shredded mozzerella. We all had two big plates.

Spaghetti and spinach nuggets

I expected to work late tonight so yesterday at the store I got spinach nuggets for dinner. I also have had a craving for spaghetti for weeks. Spaghetti with grated asiago from Aldi. So we had both for dinner. I LOVE spinach nuggets. The preschooler likes them too. Better than chicken nuggets by far, IMHO. I buy the Veggie Patch Spinach nuggets in the produce or natural food aisle (depending on the store). They're not cheap, but they're wholesome and I often use them as an entree. (About $4 per package)

Now, for the nutritional info...

In four nuggets:
80 percent of your RDA vitamin A
20 percent of vitamin C
20 percent of calcium
8 percent iron
plus 6 grams protein

Thai (Peanut Butter) Noodles

I don't quite remember where this cookbook came from, but I'm fairly certain Shannon gave it to me probably 15 years ago. Okay, so the copyright is 1996, so it's more like a decade ago. It's called Quick & Easy Recipes Pasta and Noodles Food Writers' Favorites. I was surprised to see that includes a recipe for kugel that is attributed to the wife of my former boss and favorite editor at The Morning Call.

It's been a year, maybe two, since I've made peanut butter noodles. The name sounds gross, so I often call it "Thai noodles." We'll be serving it tonight with a side salad, and maybe some fresh mango.

The recipe came from Christine Randall, who was then asst. features editor at The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C. She writes: "When I first came across this recipe, it sounded a bit offbeat, but I figured I'd try it once because it was so easy-- and I loved it."

Spicy Peanut Butter Noodles

Makes 2 to 3 servings

1/3 cup peanut butter, smooth or crunchy  

2 tablespoons vegetable oil  

2 tablespoons soy sauce  

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (can be adjusted to taste)

1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar  

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 large clove garlic, finely chopped  

8 to 12 ounces spaghetti or linguine

1. In a bowl, combine peanut butter, oil, soy sauce, cayenne, sugar, vinegar and garlic. With a rubber spatula, work mixture together until creamy and smooth. If time permits, refrigerate, covered, for four hours. (If time does not allow, don't worry, it will still be good.) Bring to room temperature before using.

2. Prepare spaghetti. Drain. Combine hot pasta and peanut butter sauce. Mix gently. Serve immediately.

Sausage and Peppers

It's been a lazy food day. For breakfast, our daughter tested one of those new Horizon chocolate milk boxes and had a quarter of a blueberry deli bagel with melted cheddar cheese. My husband and I had coffee and half a bagel with cheese. I had suggested peanut butter instead of cheese (partially because we're probably having warm spinach-cheese dip and homemade bread for dinner). The first thing I did this morning was slice the fresh pineapple, which the family enjoyed, though the four-year-old ate it almost as fast as I could cut it.

My mother, Mimi, brought us some of her sausage and peppers she made yesterday. She brought three approximately six-inch links of sausage in sauce and peppers. I chopped the sausages smaller and tossed everything on to the stove to warm. I cooked up some spaghetti. Then I dished it out onto the plates and added some asiago. There was a small serving leftover which I packed into a container for my husband's lunch tomorrow.

 

I'm dreaming of the next time I can do a real shopping trip and make some nice meals... Dreaming of beef stew, soup, baked potatoes... Mmmmm....