Cass Cooks, Too!

posted by Cass on Apr 19

No, I didn’t mispell that. I’m not talking about the pots and pans you cook in, but about what you wear while you are doing the cooking! Truth to tell, I used to wear grubbies to cook, but these days, what with the new schedule and the silly job, I’m finding that I am cooking bigger meals, more involved, but also that each meal is an occasion of sorts. I want to be looking good in the kitchen since I have guests. It’s major incentive, iykwim!

In fact, these days, I am much more likely to be caught cooking in one of these evening blouses than in my sweatpants. Although I do still wear pants in the kitchen, mind you, I’ve just kicked it up a notch, you see. I’d really love to win one of the weekly competitions from this store, cause I could really put £250 to good use in a clothing store. Couldn’t we all? That brings discount online shopping to a whole new level, right? And the sizing guide makes shopping a breeze, even for those of us on this side of the pond. Too bad they only deliver to the UK! Perhaps I need to find a friend over there who is interested in some re-shipping.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to wear my nicer clothes when I want to, and I’ll wear an apron. In fact, I bought a new full size one just the other day.

posted by Cass on Mar 30

Well, spring has sprung here, and suddenly all my earthy friends are talking about gardens. You know, tomatoes and zucchini and watermelon and all those other easy to grow foods that I love…. it’s enough to make me think about doing some gardening of my own. As if I didn’t have enough to do, LOL. But fresh tomatoes to go in my awesome guacamole? Yummmmm! And, you know, if there had been batteries in my camera when I made that guacamole Saturday, I so would have written all about it. It was that good, people. Really.

Anyway, back to the gardening thing. Are you doing it? What are you planting? And how are you going to keep your garden pest free? Back in the day, when my grandparents gardened, they used something called Sevin Dust to keep the bugs out of the plants, and then, they washed the vegetables and we ate them, and no one thought much about it. Nowadays, though, I’m concerned about what my kids eat. Not that my folks weren’t, just that we are generally better educated about the dangers of traditional pesticides than they were, yk? So, I’m looking into using organic pest control if I plant a garden.

The claims for the organic pesticides look pretty good. For instance this
organic bug patrol kills over 40 insects. That’s pretty broad spectrum, if you ask me, not that I know a whole lot about bugs, but what I want to know is what it does to people. Specifically, what does it do to little people who follow along after me and will nibble stuff when my back is turned, despite warnings to the contrary? So, if you’ve used it, did it live up to it’s claims? And do you feel comfortable from a safety standpoint?

And while I am asking questions, here, I saw an upside down tomato growing thing in Walgreens the other day. Have you used one? Known someone who used one? Laughed at the very idea of one? I can’t decide which is appropriate on my own, so help me figure out what to do, wouldja? And could I use one for the zucchini? Cause if I plant anything, I will plant those two things. And watermelon. And now, I think I am about to start repeating myself, so it must be time to hush up and go cook!

posted by Cass on Dec 24

Hi there! I’m just popping in tonight to let you know about a foodie giveaway on my craft blog. I’m giving away a Progresso Perfect Recipe basket or three, and you can find out how to enter here. Enjoy!

posted by Cass on Dec 9

So, one of the things we ended up with was turkey ham. Now, I like turkey ham, but I do not like the rind on it, so I always peel mine. Just sayin’. YMMV. Here’s what I did with mine:

oh, wait, no picture. Sorry, let’s move on.

You will need:

• turkey ham
• pasta, such as rigatoni, radiatore, shells or macaroni
• pasteurized processed cheese, like the kind that is bright orangey yellow, and comes in logs, you know the one
• butter
• flour
• milk
• pepper

Peel and dice your turkey ham. Set is aside. Start your pasta water. When it comes to a boil, add the pasta, cover it, and turn off the burner. It will be done at the time indicated on the box to boil it, but it won’t ruin if you have to leave it sit a few minutes longer. Yes, seriously. Just trust me, ok? It’s a buck’s worth of pasta to run an experiment that will save you a bunch of money over the lifetime of pasta cooking ahead of you

Now then, while you are waiting on the pasta, slice up a third of a large block of that cheese, melt a half stick of butter in a large pan, and then add a quarter cup of flour to it and stir it. You are about to make cheese sauce. Once the flour and butter are mixed together, add some milk and the cheese to the pan. Stir it constantly, and do NOT let it come to a full rolling boil. If you do, it will stick and burn and be nasty. No need to ask me for specifics on that, it was a long time ago, and details are fuzzy.

So, heat your milk, cheese and butter/flour, and stir until it becomes sauce. You can control the thickness by adjusting the amount of milk you add. I can’t help more than that, because I just use “some”. And then, if it is too thick, I add “more”. Gotta love cooking with Cass, right?

When the pasta is done, and the sauce is as thick as you like it, mix it all together. I also like to add broccoli to mine, but sometimes the people I live with revolt, and they wish to not eat broccoli in everything. Peasants.

And that brings us to the December Angel Food menu. I do hope you are taking advantage of this woneerful resource. This month, $30 will buy.

1.5 lb. Choice Cut Beef Roast
2 lb. Breaded Chicken Tenders
2 lb. IQF Chicken Breast
1.5 lb. Pork Chops (4 x 6 oz.)
1 lb. 80/20 Lean Beef Patties (4 x 4 oz.)
28 oz. Salisbury Steak Entreé
1 lb. All Meat Hot Dogs
1 lb. Carrots
1 lb. Green Beans
1 lb. Rice
24 oz. Steak-Cut Fries
32 oz. 2% Reduced Fat Shelf Stable Milk
7.5 oz. Mac and Cheese
14 oz. Chicken Broth
7 oz. Corn Muffin Mix
Dozen Eggs
Dessert Item

We will be getting four boxes, and I am pleased to say that I mostly just but staples and breakfast foods at the grocery store any more, along with sale meats which included ribs, ground chuck and boston butt this week.

So, you can expect recipes for:

tacos
homemade bbq
beef roast
fried chicken
hamburger casserole

and who knows what else in the coming days.

posted by Cass on Nov 19

You know, …….. just imagine me sitting here astounded, because I am. I’ve been watching the price of grocery store food go up a few pennies per item for several months now, and wondering and worrying about how I am going to stretch provisions to make sure we don’t have leftover month at the end of the food.

Do you know that there are people who live in gated communities in my area, who are relying on food from charity organizations to eat? This morning, my husband went to pick up commodity foods. The doors opened at 9, he was there at 9:30, and they had already run out of three of the 4 promised meat items. How can this be in the richest country on earth?

I’m listening to news about how Washington is bailing out banks, and getting ready to hand over money to car makers, and the banks are still foreclosing on homes, and the auto makers are still paying their CEOs annual fortunes, and I am beginning to get angry. No, that’s wrong, I am not beginning to get angry, I am angry. Who is going to bail out the American family? My husband and I are both looking for work, I’m scraping every cent I can together to try to get my phone turned back on, and yet……. the government is giving more money to the very people whose piss-poor decisions and greed got us into this fix in the first place. And I am wondering what I can possibly do about it. How can I help you, my reader, make your food dollar go a little further?

I’m left rembering what I said I was going to do a couple of weeks ago: focus on recipes that use items from Angel Food and now, commodity food. And whatever I can find cheap or on a real good sale.

Now, I am begging and borrowing internet right now, and don’t even have my computer. I’ve asked a friend to try to repair the display on it so I can use it away from home. But I am going to figure out a way to cook, take pictures and upload them so you can “see what I am talking about” when I post a recipe.

In the meantime, I am at the library and the machine here doesn’t take sd cards. In fact, it still takes the little floppies. I haven’t seen a floppy drive in a very long time. There isn’t even a usb port. Really. Which brings me to another question– can we get the government to supply updated computers to local libraries?

Ok, back to the food! Next time I post, I’ll tell you how to make something that involves turkey ham.

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posted by Cass on Nov 5

Today, let’s talk about milk and pancakes. Sounds yummy, right? Now, I quit buying milk a couple of years ago, when Drama developed a sudden and alarming allergy to it. If you’ve never had the privilege of watching your calm, placid 2 year old break out in hives and then start banging her head against the wall in agony, let me tell you, you haven’t missed anything desirable. It’s horrible. Anyway, back to the milk. DaBaby loves it and I bought it for her after she was weaned until she turned two and then switched to dried milk, and only for cooking.

Lately Drama has had a few incident free encounters with milk some without breaking out, but I still wasn’t buying whole liquid milk because of the cost. After all, it’s 4 bucks a gallon! That’s outrageous— Except that I allow a budget of $4 a pound for cheese and such. A pound of cheese is 16 servings, and that breaks down to a quarter per serving. There are also 16 servings in a gallon of milk, so the cost per serving would be exactly the same. And the kids like it! And as Ranee points out in her post on frugality, buying milk may help reduce my food budget in other areas. (By the way, spend a few minutes checking out Arabian Knits. Lots of tasty recipes, a bit of knitting and almost as many cute kids as I have.)

So that’s the milk. Let’s move on to the pancakes! Here’s the recipe:

1 1/2 c. milk
1 c. rolled oats (oatmeal)
1 tbsp. oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c. flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

The original calls for brown sugar, but I like to use white, because I have a hard time gettiing the brown sugar to un-lump and mix in after it sits a bit. And sit it does. Here’s why: I make up several batches at once. My family eats a double recipe of this, so I put

1 cup flour
2 tbsp of sugar
2 tsp baking powder
and 1/2 tsp salt

in each of 3 or 4 containers. Then when we want pancakes, I soak the oats, then add the contents of the packet, the eggs and the oil. Mix, cook, enjoy with jelly or syrup or honey. You know, I bet these would be awesome with milk

posted by Cass on Oct 21

I got a great deal tonight, and I want to share the goodness with you. The fact that I will get an egift card when people participate has very little with my pleasure in sharing my good fortune. Ok, maybe a little bit, but only a little, I promise.

First, go here. Set up an account. You don’t have to love the gecko, or even give him money, you just need the account. After you register, you will eventually get an email. It will have a link to a $25 gift certificate to Omaha Steaks. Go pick up that number, but be aware it can take up to several hours for the email to arrive.

Once you have that number, go to Omaha Steaks and enter your email address. In turn, they will give you 12 free burgers with any order. Click “Redeem here” under the picture of the burgers on that same page, and start shopping. I ordered 12 more four ounce burgers for 14.99. Then I applied my $25 gift certificate, and paid a whopping $3.98 by paypal, (shipping is crazy high, so use that gift certificate to cover it) and I will have 24 hamburgers on my door step next Wednesday.

Let me do the math real quick….. 24 burgers, $3.98, that’s less than 17 cents each, roughly four and a quarter cents per ounce. Go get yours before they wake up!

posted by Cass on Oct 6

Boy, am I glad this week for a full pantry and freezer. Times are tough all over, and we didn’t have much money for restocking this week. That’s not a huge issue, because I’ve been shopping the good deals, and also, there is still a lot of food left from Angel Food. A little milk and oatmeal, and I can eek us out for another week, and we can eat well without taking out a personal loan for food.

Learning to shop frugally is an ongoing adventure for me. Right now, we are spending between five and six hundred dollars a month. 6 months ago, we were regularly spending between eight and nine hundred. I’ve shaved the equivalent of a auto loan payment off our grocery choices, just by making better decisions in the store. We are eating healthier and we are eating a better variety, and we are doing it for less. I’m really happy with that, and I haven’t even started using coupons yet! I said yet, because I do plan to start using them as soon as I make myself sit down for a few minutes and figure out how to start getting my hands on the Sunday paper for less than 2 bucks a week.

You may notice some repeats on this weeks menu. There were several nights last week where we had something off the “official” menu. Both of my older girls like to cook, and so if they have something they want to make, I let them do so, as long as we have the ingredients. This week’s menu is a little more rigid, since we will be using up the tail end of the frozen foods. That’s ok, because I will be going shopping this coming weekend. I don’t know exactly when, since we have football all day Saturday, and I have church on Sunday morning and I am singing in a talent show on Sunday night. Anyway, here’s the menu:

~pintos (these are already cooked and the famfam says they are delish. I started them before I left for the day yesterday, just adding a large can of diced tomatoes, about half a cup of dried cilantro and a bit of salt to a pound and a half of pintos, then cooking all day in the crockpot.)

chicken on a can
ribs
chicken and pastry
fried catfish
burritos

Hey, here’s an question for ya. How do you think the recent bailout will affect food prices? I know at first glance it seems like the two are unrelated, but I’ve found that everything effects food prices in one way or another. Is the government’s 700Billion dollar attempt at saving the banks a good thing for the people? Or do you think more families will be needing debt consolidation just to afford the basics? And if they do need it, will they be able to get it with the tighter strictures on lending?

posted by Cass on Oct 1

I told you on Monday to expect a post on Angel Food Ministries soon, and here it is. We used them for the first time this past month, and I am totally impressed. We’ll be using them again, that’s for sure! We bought two boxes and here’s what we got for 60 bucks:

2 pounds of pinto beans
2 bags of pizza poppers
7 pounds of chicken bites
2 pounds of ground turkey
2 pounds of broccoli
2 bags of french fries
2 pork tenderloins
4 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast
2 boxes of mac and cheese
2 boxes of chicken flavored rice mx
2 boxes of oatmeal cookies
2 boxes of shelf-stable milk
3 pounds of steak
8 cheddar-beef brats
2 dozen eggs

There may be more that I am forgetting, but I really don’t think the price can be beat, and the quality is excellent! We had the steak last night, and it was so tender that some of the pieces came apart from their own weight as I was putting it on the grill. I got read to cut mine at the table, and it just shredded apart.

I don’t know how we’ll use all of this, but I definitely see chicken and noodles, chicken and pastry, chicken and dumplings and chicken and rice in our near future, all made with the chicken bites.

And next month? We’re doing it again, and the boxes will include:

1.5 lb. Ribeye Steaks (4 x 6 oz.)
4.5 lb. (Avg) Split Chicken Breast Family Tray Pack
26 oz. Heat and Serve Meatloaf and Brown Gravy
1 lb. Chicken Breast Fajita Strips
1 lb. Boneless Center-Cut Pork Chops (4 x 4 oz.)
1 lb. Fully Cooked Meatballs
1 lb. All Meat Hot Dogs
1 lb. Frozen Sliced Carrots
1 lb. California Blend Vegetables
1 lb. Pasta
28 oz. Marinara Sauce
48 oz. Hawaiian Punch
32 oz. Borden 2% Reduced Fat Shelf Stable Milk
12 ct. Corn Tortillas
One Dozen Eggs
One Dessert Item

We’ll get two boxes again, and we may get one of the “special” boxes as well. If you are trying to stretch your food budget, I seriously recommend Angel Food. As we go through the month, I’ll let you know more about how we used some of the different foods!

P.S. The french fries are also good. We had some with the corndogs I picked up BOGO at Piggly Wiggly on Saturday.

posted by Cass on Sep 18

I just want to let you know that I am indeed back, and glad to be home. I installed a few plug-ins this morning to make our user experiences a bit more friendly. On the outside, it’s mostly comment related: you can now click a button to subscribe to comments for any post, and also clickable smilies. Love me some smilies!

Internally, there are a couple of comment ones, and also Zemanta. I love me some Zemanta almost as much as I love clickable smilies. Which I also have in here. See?

Hahahahahahah.

And yes, next time, I will talk about FOOD.