Salsa - Check!

The first canning of the season has happened. Finally. I mean, it is the end of August. 

But none of this stuff came from my garden! We still have our first tomato trying to turn orange, with all the others plain old, unripe green. My generous brother-in-law offered me these tomatoes from his garden, so I went over and picked a sack full this afternoon, which was just enough to make me a batch of salsa! At last, I have one of the tomato products crossed off my must-can-this-year list, and it is such a good feeling! My handy All American double-stack canner has helped me once again, and I now have 11 pints of salsa sitting on the counter top, the sound of sealing lids filling the air. 

Pumpkins

Apparently last Thursday when I went out to check the garden and capture pictures for you all, I neglected to peek down inside the middle of the pumpkin plants! I went out a couple days later and discovered there were some nice, BIG pumpkins out there! The one shown on the left was the longest I found, at around 12 inches long. The one pictured in the middle was the biggest overall (approximately 10 inches from stem to blossom end), and the other one shows a few of my pie pumpkins. Unfortunately I also noticed that the terrible gray squash beetles have showed their ugly faces and have been devouring my plants. I spent an evening out there dusting the plants with Diatomaceous Earth until I ran out of that, crushed a few beetle egg clusters, and weeded half of the pumpkin patch (something I hadn't done since they were very tiny plants). Now I need to go out with some soapy water and try to get those squash beetles. I hear when they arrive, it's a hard battle to fight against them. The bad news is that it has been raining here, which makes it hard for me to get out to find them, but the rain has been much needed and will help the fruit that has started growing, continue further into maturity.

Our Pitiful Garden Bears Fruit

This has been a rough year in our garden. It started out pretty well, but got rocky about the time we planted it all outdoors. As usual (but it seems quite a bit worse than usual), our plants are so slow growing. The pepper plants, which we started indoors five months ago are roughly 8 inches tall. EIGHT INCHES! In five months. 

But today. Today I went out and saw progress on these petite little things. We have a few buds! Which means we might actually get some peppers this year! Think the plants can hold up any fruit? I highly doubt that we'll get anything of significant size, since the plants obviously don't seem to be getting very many nutrients to promote much growth at all. But still, these flowers brought some excitement.

Our lettuce has finally been producing well, and we have enjoyed many a delicious salad in these last 2-3 weeks. We have a fair amount without going overboard like we did last year. It produces just a tad faster than we can eat it. 

My experimental pumpkin patch has had its share of ups and downs, as well. They took off with a great start, and transplanted incredibly well. They grew and grew, but then slowed down for awhile, but with the nice rain we've been getting lately, they have exploded once again. I can water with the hose, but nothing makes plants grow like a good summer downpour. Recently I saw our first few little round pumpkins, so it's time to be flooding that patch with water to help them grow big and fast. 

We've had a time with these pests though. This is the third year I've grown squash, but it's the first we've seen cucumber beetles. They are such pests! I heard they can do a lot of damage in a little time, so at first sighting I started crushing all the eggs I could see. This was back before the plants were very big, which made the job a bit easier. Next, I needed to target the full-grown beetles, so I mixed a sugar-water solution and sprayed it on all the plants. It seemed to have helped, since the leaves haven't been getting eaten like they were. Checking on the plants a couple days later there did appear to be fewer beetles, but they were still attacking the stalks, flowers, and base of each plant. I only applied the sugar once, so maybe another shot at it would've rid them entirely. 

My next plan of attack was diatomaceous earth. I had a giant bag left from last year, so I generously dusted every bit of the plant I could. I'm not sure how effective that was, but I think I need to do it again. I've had so many buds die and fall off already, I can't afford to lose any more. Thankfully there seem to be a growing number of them opening, so I may still get a decent harvest.

The sad part is that my larger variety pumpkins seem to be dying in the center of the plant hills. I'm guessing this must be from the cucumber beetles attacking the stem. I haven't noticed it happening to my pie pumpkins yet. I planted those using seeds I had saved from my best one two years ago, and those plants seem to be so hearty and healthy this year! 

 Look! A little pumpkin!

I planted some beets, hoping to get a few to eat fresh and also some to make borscht. Aaron doesn't prefer plain canned beets but loves them pickled, so last year I only made pickled beets. I found myself wishing I had some plain ones just to eat, and also thoroughly enjoyed the borscht I made with the few stragglers that were left in the garden, so I wanted to plan on having some this year so I could make it again! I wrote a blog post with the recipe, which you can find here. 

The deer came through and ate the tops off most of the plants, but don't seem to have been back in the beets since. I was afraid they were all done for, but they have nice, lush leaves once again.

 The cucumbers seem to be doing pretty good, too. By this time last year I was in the middle of pickle season, so they are definitely late this year. I spotted cucumber beetles on these plants as well, but not in the quantity that were over in the pumpkin patch. I dusted the cukes heavily with diatomaceous earth right away, so it was more of a preventative measure than a war on cucumber beetles. This was a couple weeks ago, but I did see a few while out weeding this morning, so I need to go reapply the DE powder again. I think I can stay on top of them here as long as it doesn't rain so much that I can't spread diatomaceous earth.

And then there are the tomatoes. These things have been all over the place. They didn't take too well to transplanting, suffered some weird deficiency that turned the plants all black and purply, and got flooded during the national emergency that was declared in our area, but the buds are plentiful and growing tomatoes! I am super excited to see fruit after wondering if I'd lose all my plants over and over throughout the summer. I have never had such a roller coaster ride watching plants before, but every time the tomatoes showed progress, something else would happen. Actually the latest was something coming through lopping the tops off the plants right through the tomato cages. I thought deer were the most likely culprit, but didn't know they ate tomato plants? My pantry is bare of most all my tomato products, so I need these things to survive. Things are looking hopeful now, but until I see a few red ones, I'm still holding my breath. Here's to anticipating homemade salsa and chili!

Cooking for a Crowd: Episode 7 - Ice Cream Sundaes

This last weekend has brought more than just extra cooking for our monthly crowd meal. Each year we host a big party at our house and that just so happened to be this past Saturday. There's always a lot of work going into hosting an event of that size (we were planning for 100), but we enjoy hosting everybody, being able to catch up with friends, and watching them all have a good time. Plus, we get the added bonus of a cleaned-up homeplace and some leftover food!

Speaking of food (since Cooking for a Crowd is all about finding budget-worthy meals for high guest count), I made sloppy joe using 25 lbs. of ground beef, which I found locally for 1.59/lb, and the hamburger buns were bought from a bakery "thrift store" at $0.75/package. We had a good 5 lbs. of sloppy joe leftover, and lots of buns, which I have been cutting up and freezing as crumbs for meatloaf or hamburgers, and cubes for egg casseroles. I normally have homemade bread around that I  canuse for those recipes, but since these burger buns were left over and otherwise would've gone in the trash (which essentially is throwing money away), I figure I might as well try and use 'em, since I make things requiring bread crumbs/cubes fairly regularly. I'll see how convenient it actually is having them in the freezer, since I know it can take a little while for bread to thaw. I did put them in pre-measured portions, which I recommend! Last winter I froze extra cornbread in crumbs for the same purpose, but dumped them all in one bag. When it came time that I needed to use them, it was one giant, frozen bread chunk, and it was no easy chore breaking apart as much as I needed while still frozen. I'm hoping the smaller portions will help solve that problem. 

Knowing I had a party to host Saturday and Crowd Dessert on Sunday, I didn't have time to make anything over the weekend for the dessert. So, since we also had ice cream at the party, I got an extra pail for the Sunday meal. The ice cream toppings that were leftover went with it on Sunday, as well. It was not the most inexpensive dessert I could've come up with, but it was easy, and I was willing to pay a little extra for the convenience.  

When Sunday rolled around, I ended up staying home due to not feeling well, so Aaron took the ice cream over. He didn't come back with any, so I assume it all got eaten. It was a one gallon container, which I found on sale for $5.99. The toppings were sprinkles (around 1 1/2 cups worth), and homemade chocolate magic shell. I'm not sure if the magic shell must've hardened, if he stuck it in the fridge while over there, or if people didn't consume as much as I expected, because a decent portion of what I sent with him came back. I'm not sure the exact cost of the toppings, but all in all, it was an $8+ dessert. Divide that by 40, and you get around 21c/serving. That's twice the Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars, and three times the cost of last month's Snickerdoodle Cookies. 

Cooking for a Crowd: Episode 6 - Burrito Bowls

We're back with another edition of Crowd Cooking! This time we decided to go a little different route with our meal. With as warm as this summer has been, nobody wants to be slaving away in a hot kitchen, so I went for a meal that didn't require baking or extensive stove-top cooking during the heat of the day. The meal? Burrito Bowls!

One of the great features of this dish is ... lots of meat. Everybody loves meat! Another nice twist to this meal, is that it features some great popping flavors by using lime and cilantro. I find myself all too often sticking with plain old american tasting dishes, as much as I love the flare of other cuisine. I received some extra-positive compliments on the meal, and even my husband was wowed at how it all came together. He was also more than happy that we had leftovers to bring home.

While there are a lot of little parts to the meal (since it's a build-your-own style), it really was quite simple to make, especially considering the number of people I expected to serve.

Most of the prep was done the day of, since the veggies needed to stay as fresh as possible, but I was able to prepare a couple other things the day before:

The recipe I used as a guideline said to grill the chicken before chopping, but I don't have a grill, so I improvised. I marinated the chicken breasts for an hour in a delicious homemade concoction before cooking. Instead of using the recommended grill, I laid the chicken breasts out on a sheet pan and baked them. I fully intended to sear it in a cast-iron skillet beforehand, but I forgot about that detail until after I pulled the finished product out of the oven. I believe that would've been an unnecessary step, since the meat I pulled out from baking was nice and juicy, and nicely seasoned from the marinade. I let it cool enough to work with, and then chopped it into small cubes, which got dumped into an 8-quart crock-pot and placed in the fridge overnight.

The other thing I was able to prepare ahead was the beans. I always use dry beans rather than canned. It is very cost effective, and as long as you plan ahead a little, isn't much extra work. (I do not soak dry beans before cooking. I have read a number of conflicting articles on soaking or not soaking and have not found a difference in either method, either in cooking time or quality of product, so I opt for the simpler, quicker method.) Because it takes awhile to cook before beans are done, I used our outdoor propane stove. This helped keep the heat outside. When done, I put them in our 4-quart crock-pot and placed in the refrigerator. My original plan was to use the beans as filler to stretch the meat, but the chicken filled the crockpot all the way, so I decided to keep the beans separate. Besides, Aaron isn't fond of dry beans, so I knew he'd be happier with this choice.

In the morning, I turned the crockpot of chicken on high for 3-3.5 hours, and the beans on low. The beans were just right, and the chicken was just warm enough (I ended up having to stir it after 2 hours to help it heat through. I know you're not supposed to open a crockpot while cooking....). I also should've put some water on the bottom of the crockpot before adding the chicken, as it dried out quite a bit while heating up in the morning. Because it wasn't being served plain it wasn't a huge deal, but just a note for next time.

Day-of prep included chopping cilantro, lettuce, and tomatoes, and cooking the rice. For the rice, I juiced two limes and toasted the dry rice in the lime juice and some cooking oil. I then poured in the water and salt and cooked as normal. After cooking, I added the chopped cilantro and fluffed the rice with a fork. The flavor was pretty good on the rice, but I could've easily used one more lime. I'm not a huge lime person, but still thought it was a little weak in that area.  

As far as amounts and totals,
here are the final figures:

Rice- 12c. dry @$0.57/lb ...  3.07
Limes- x2 .........................      .98
Cilantro- 1 bunch .............    1.29

Chicken- 10lbs + breasts .. 17.24
Marinating ingredients ....       .30

Pinto Beans- 1lb. ............     1.75

Lettuce- 1 head ...............      .99

Tomatoes- 2.21 lbs. ........     2.17

Cheese- 1.5 lbs ...............     3.89

Sour Cream- 3, 24 oz. ....     8.07  

Spices and other misc ....       .30

Total: $40.05


I also had a jar of salsa and served 3 quarts of corn as a vegetable. Both of these were free from our garden.

Ways I could've cut cost further:
I went to the "big town" to do all my shopping, since they were having a sale on chicken and that alone cut my cost by dollars. I decided to buy the sour cream and lettuce there so I wouldn't have to go to yet another store (my local grocer) where they were on sale cheaper. It is an 18 mile drive from the "big town" store, and I didn't want to chance baby needing fed about the time I would've arrived back home at our local store. So, I paid $0.74 more for that convenience. I should've used lettuce from my garden, but I barely had enough (it has been a rough garden year!), and figured I'd save it for personal use.

I was on my way home from "big town" store when I realized I completely forgot the limes and cilantro even though it was on my list which I scanned numerous times before checking out. So I went back to our local store anyway. So much for paying for the convenience of getting the lettuce and sour cream at one store, because I could have just waited and gotten them cheaper had I known I needed to stop anyway. Thankfully baby was still content as ever as I shopped our local store for the two forgotten ingredients. We made it home and in the house before she let out even the smallest whimper. :)

I had one pound of beans already on my pantry shelf (@1.75/lb), but found a 5-lb bag much cheaper (@$1.00/lb) at a restaurant supply store, so I bought that not knowing how many beans I was actually going to use. I calculated my cost at the more expensive price, since I ended up only using that pound of beans I already had. Next time though, I will be able to use the smaller figure. :)

Leftovers: 
We had a lot of rice and chicken leftover! My goal is to get better at having food leftover so I'm confident everyone is getting enough, plus having extra in the event more guests arrive. Anything leftover makes a great Monday night supper, or lunch for Aaron at work, which he took today and thoroughly enjoyed. We had a good 12-15 cups of [fluffed] cooked rice left, and about 6 cups of chicken. All of the veggies got eaten, as well as the salsa, corn, and beans. I had bought the cheese in a 5lb. bag, so I had lots to take home still. Also there was between 8-12 oz. of sour cream left.

Looking back: 
I should've made twice as many beans. Because I was planning to mix it in with the chicken to stretch it, I didn't do a whole lot in order to keep it from being too beany. That one pound of beans were finished off right away and half the guests didn't have them as an option for their burritos. I guess they were more well liked as a topping than I anticipated! (I know I love beans, but didn't think everybody did!) I should've had another lime for the rice, and I also should've provided a little more lettuce and tomatoes. I think we had just enough.

This was one of my more expensive crowd meals, but I was aiming to try to serve more than usual, since I was aware of a few extra guests coming, and also because I wanted to try and plan for leftovers. Still, in planning on cooking for 40, I was able to get in at exactly $1 per serving. And the leftovers (enough for a couple meals), I will call free dinners for my family. This is a bit more than I hope to spend for a Crowd Meal, but considering the leftovers, we're alright. As long as I don't go over a dollar per person, I'll still call it a fairly inexpensive meal overall.

Deal of the Week

If you live near me, don't list an ad titled "Free Sale". Actually do, if you want to get rid of stuff. You'll at least get me curious enough to stop! Yesterday I found one such ad, and since I was planning on going out in the morning anyway, I made this my first stop. The picture on the listing showed bolts and remnants of fabric, which I found out was because it was the custom drapery business holding the "sale". I was kind of hoping to snag one of those bolts and redo our bedroom window with a nice lightly colored sheer curtain like I saw in the ad. I arrived shortly after 9 (start time), and there was only one puny little bolt left. Not only that, but I was pretty disappointed upon walking in to discover the smell of smoke. When I come across that kind of sale, I usually turn right back around and leave. I don't want to deal with trying to get rid of the lingering odor on a potential purchase, so I don't even temp myself. I didn't turn around this time though, since I was already inside and I knew it was all free (you know, curiosity), but I decided against getting any fabric, knowing it wasn't worth my time anymore. Glancing at the shelves of remnants, I saw there were only pieces that were so small you could barely make a pillow out of them, so that made me feel better. In one corner near the doorway, there was a big tote of wrapping paper, and that's where I found my treasures. I smelled the rolls before sorting through them and didn't notice that it had soaked up much smoke smell, so I rummaged through the box. There were several rolls of unopened paper, a bunch of mostly-full rolls, and some that were only half used. Wrapping paper is something we have never had in all our three years being married! I have never been able to justify spending a couple dollars for a roll so small you can only wrap a few gifts. I've always opted for creative, free gift wrapping methods, like the one I mentioned in a post last winter. Now we have several different options to chose from, and there are a variety of prints for every occasion. I actually like some of the older gift papers better than the array of loud gaudy ones you find today, so this was a cool find. I think my favorite print from my new stash is the floral one in the back. I'm kind of excited for an opportunity to wrap a gift again now that I have more fun options. Anyone want to invite me to their party? 

Cooking For a Crowd: Episode 5 - Snickerdoodle Cookies

For this month's Crowd Dessert, I decided to make Snickerdoodle Cookies. There were a couple reasons why I chose these; one, because they didn't require any extra high-cost ingredients (like chocolate or peanut butter), and secondly because I wanted to test the part-oil theory on an actual cookie versus bars, which we tried successfully last month.

We made snickerdoodles quite a bit growing up. It's the cookie I would call my brother John's signature. I have six brothers, and almost all of them are as good or better in the kitchen than most of us sisters. Or at least, me. I love to cook but I'm being serious, my brothers know how. Somehow every time I managed to be in charge of baking I had at least one of them over my shoulder. Now I'm not sure if it's because they doubted my expertise, if it was because I was the little sister, or because ... cookie dough. I know my dad came by because of the cookie dough.

My recipe said it made 48 servings, so I doubled it. For some reason the projected yield is never accurate for me, so of course I doubted I would get 96 cookies in the end. The double recipe ended up making 62 cookies, and I know we didn't eat 34 cookies-worth of dough. I was rather proud of myself actually. I limited myself greatly by only taking a sampling of the raw dough! I wanted to get an accurate figure on how much it would yield, wanted to make sure I had enough to serve the next day (making another batch meant that much more cost into ingredients), and I also wasn't really in the mood for sweets. I'm sure this goes down as a record as I didn't eat one. single. cookie. Not even freshly baked. Not even knowing we had milk in the refrigerator. I'm amazed. Someone needs to mark this date in history. As I was plating them though I let Aaron sample a cookie, so we ended up taking 61 to serve. Ideally I would've liked to have saved out about 10 cookies for hubby, but my numbers were cut a little too close.

I did try using oil in place of half the butter. If it worked so well in sheet pan bar cookies, then it should be fine in a regular cookie recipe, right? That's what I wanted to know. Using part oil does make a more greasy dough, but you really can't tell the difference when baked. After mixing up my dough it was a bit too soft to roll into balls, so I stuck it in the fridge to cool for an hour. This is one thing I never took into account when using a oil as a substitute. Butter hardens when cool, but oil remains in a liquid state. I really wasn't sure how well it would take to chilling, since I used half butter, half oil. It ended up just fine! The dough wasn't so hard you couldn't work with it, but was still soft and moldable. I formed about half the dough into balls and rolled it in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and put the rest of it back in the refrigerator so it wouldn't soften too much before I was ready to shape the rest of it.

Since the last cooking episode, I have been able to get a few ingredients at a lower cost than before. I paid 50c less per pound of butter, saved 12c/lb on sugar, and also stocked up on oil while it was on sale, which lowered my cost to $0.41/cup rather than the $0.64/cup I had paid previously. I had bought the other oil over the winter and couldn't remember what price I paid, so I had been calculating using the full price. Now that I know what I bought it for this time, I marked it on the bottle so I can look back for quick reference. I saved 64 cents just by finding cheaper prices on a few of my ingredients.

After baking, the cookies were about 3" in diameter, so they were a nice size. We took 61 cookies, and there were about a half dozen on the plate when I wrapped them up to head home, so the numbers ended up being just right. My final cost into the entire batch was $4.32, which gives us a figure of $0.07 per cookie. Comparing prices, it cost me almost a dollar less to make these versus the chocolate chip bars I made last month. And I saved 4 cents a serving compared to last time as well! I'm excited to have made it under my $5 goal budget. So far, $5 to feed dessert to 40 people seems like a fair number, but we've only tested two recipes, so stay tuned for our next dessert episode so we can compare again!