Cass Cooks, Too!

posted by admin on Aug 14

So, I showed you my menu, right? And yesterday, practice was cancelled, so I got to go to the grocery store. Now, last month, we ate pretty good, and I spent about $700 on groceries. Last night, I spent $400 on what I hope to make last 2 weeks. I wasn’t even able to get all the stuff on my list, for crying out loud! Remember that flood a while back in the midwest? I saw those fields covered in water, and I mentally said “Oh, crap!!” because I knew what was going to happen, and Lo! Behold!! It has come to pass!!! Groceries have increased at least 25%, and when you are feeding this many people, that is a crisis.

And do you understand that I am not talking about luxury food items like ice cream and chocolate chips????? Those prices are about the same, but the flour and sugar and meats and dairy are insanely high.

And have I mentioned that my husband drives for a living? I knew that we weren’t quite keeping up with the Joneses and all, but I’m finding it hard to understand how meeting our basic food, clothing, shelter and transportation needs has put us in a financial crisis. How do you get Debt relief for basic recurring life expenses?

Well, I don’t know what to do about clothing, shelter and transportation, right off hand, but I know what we are going to do about food. I had been making a clear separation between lunch foods (usually cheaper dishes with less meat) and dinner meals (more meat, spendier ingredients), and in order to make that food I bought last night last $400 worth, that has to change. We’ll be eating lunch and dinner meals for dinner, and lunch will be leftovers or a sandwich. And we will be eating the leftovers. All of them. Because we can’t afford not to!

It’s just smart financially to not be wasteful! The first step to financial prudence is to be wise in how you utilize your resources. After all, it’s hard to invest if you spend all you have on necessities. And how do you plan for the future if every bit of your energy is spent trying to make it through the today?

But enough gloom and doom! This means that I get a chance to share some pretty frugal cooking ideas with you. Let’s start next time when I tell you just how far 2 pounds of dry beans can go. You’ll need one pound of chub sausage, and 2 pounds of either pintos or blackeyed peas (or a combination), and a hunk of salt pork. You should be able to purchase that for less that $10, but you’ll also need rice and tortillas. And sausage patties or links. If you can afford them. They aren’t necessary as rice and beans together form a complete protein. However, adding sausage patties, rice and tortillas will only cost you another $10, for a total of $20, and you’ll get several meals from it. If you are feeling really extravagant, or already have rice and tortillas on hand, pick up some cheese and sour cream.

ETA for you yankees:

A “chub” is a roll of sausage. And a good substitute for salt pork is bacon ends.

Thanks, Ang. for pointing out the geo-differences.

posted by admin on Aug 7

Did you know that I used to be a smoker? I just passed my one year non-smoker anniversary. One of the things I have noticed since I stopped smoking is that I taste more, and taste diferently. I no longer taste just the top tones of a spice or flavor, but the undertones and aftertastes as well. It’s kind of interesting to know now that most of my life I wasn’t tasting what I ate. Which is kind of amusing, considering how much I love to eat, LOL!

I called this paprika eureka is that the first spice I re-discovered was paprika, and I was reminded of that when I wrote my review of The Spice Merchant’s Daughter today.

Consider this post the cyber equivalent of me passing around the bottle and saying taste this! Try it in dry beans, on chicken and fish, and also on popcorn!

posted by admin on Aug 1

Do you guys drink wine with your meals? I have to admit that I usually don’t have wine until the evenings after the kids are in bed. I’ve never really bothered to figure out what goes with what, and my folks never served wine, so it’s just not something I know how to do. But I’d like to. I guess if I ever get around to throwing an actual dinner party, I will make the effort to put it all together with the right wines for the courses. I am actually kind of proud of myself for moving out of my white zinfandel comfort zone in the past half-year. There are some really nice wines out there, yes, even at Wal-Mart and even at less than $10 bucks a bottle if you can let your tongue do the tasting instead of your “palate”.

In the meantime, since studying wine is not on my official agenda, I can cheat. I read Rachel Ray’s mag, and in the back of every issue, she suggests wines to go with the recipes. That works for me, for now. Only most of them aren’t available at Wal-Mart, nor are they under ten bucks. Also, Boone’s Farm still burns my tongue. Just sayin’

posted by admin on Jul 26

I want to give a good shout out to my friend, Retta. She’s a good egg, and really smart. Back when this blog was a glimmer in my eye, I asked he to make a theme for me, and she worked head down for a bit and came up with this one for me. I loved it! But in the meantime, you can’t have a naked blog, so I had installed another one. Inertia took over and I just left the other one up because my attention had wandered. However, when I decided it was time to renew my passion over here, I went and found this theme, filed away at easywahmwebsites.com, just waiting for me, as if Retta knew I would come back for it.

Anyway, that’s the story, Morning Glory. Retta blogs over at Just Not Martha. Go read her. She’s a keeper.

posted by admin on Jul 20

you probably ought to check out one of my other blogs! Each Thursday, I run a segment called “Cass in the Kitchen” over on Cass Knits! I do cookbook reviews, talk about the occasional cooking website, and share some of my best recipes, along with mouth watering pictures to tempt you into succumbing to my culinary magic. Seriously, it’s good stuff!

posted by admin on Jul 14

I was looking through my photo cards trying to find some pictures I had taken for this blog of various kitchen utensils that I have burned and mangled beyond recognition, and I found this photo I took for SPS of me frying bacon early on Sunday morning. Good thing I at least found this, because I think I deleted the others. Too bad, because they were worth a giggle at least. Oh well. I guess I can re-take them.

posted by admin on Jul 11

You know, there are many, many reasons to cook. The very least reason is because someone’s belly is hungry. Truly. They sell boxes of stuff at the grocery store that you just have to pop in the microwave and heat, and lo! behold! the belly fills. Shoot, the other day, I even saw cans of soup that heated when you opened them, no microwave needed. What’s the cooking in that? There isn’t any, that’s what.

I cook today because my Grandmother taught me to love to cook. You’ll notice I say Grandmother, because in truth, my mother hates to cook. For many years it was because she wasn’t very good at it, but now she is a good cook and she still doesn’t like to do it. It was my Grandmother who taught me to make biscuits from scratch. It was my Grandmother who taught me that fried chicken is done when it doesn’t sizzle up when you turn it over. It was my Grandmother who taught me that a cake is done when it starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. I’ve never ever been able to replicate her beef gravy, though.

The biggest thing she taught me is that you cook because you love people. And that is why my mother cooks, even though she hates it. She loves the people who eat with her. Every time I cook, I remember the lessons Grandmother taught me. I remember because each time I walk in my kitchen, I get a good visual reminder of them. I see her popcorn pot and her apron on top of my fridge. That’s her sifter and cracker tin, too.

posted by admin on Jul 5

Hi, my name is Cass, and I know how to cook. It came to my attention that other people might be interested in how I go about that, and so a new blog was born. You’ll find menus and recipes here, and since cooking is about more than food, you’ll find information and reviews on cooking tools and dishes and all that stuff. In fact, if it’s about the kitchen, from the kitchen or in the kitchen, I will probably talk about it sooner or later. And every now and again, I’ll probably talk about something that has nothing to do with the kitchen other than the fact that the thought occurred to me while I was cooking. Because I am like that: I Digress could practically be my motto. Ha, I think I’ll go ahead and make that a category right now. This post can go in there.

Ok, what makes me qualified to run a cooking blog? I cook (did I say that?) for nine people. We eat four times a day here. I saw on tv a restaurant that served fewer meals per day than I do. They charged an astronomical amount of money, and also someone was murdered there, but still–they had a lower number of meals served per day than I do. Also, I used to have a cooking business. You know those businesses where you go to this big kitchen and make a bunch of meals and take them home to your freezer? I used to do that, only in people’s houses. I’d go to the store, buy the food, cook the food, freeze the food, and they would pay me. Frealz!

So, that’s me and this blog in a nutshell. I will gladly take your comments, questions and suggestions. While I am waiting on all of you to find me, it’s time to get cooking!