Cass Cooks, Too!

posted by Cass on Mar 23

Okay, remember that lovely soup I told you about last time? It was even better over tater tots.

Put the tater tots on the plate, pour the soup over, and then smoosh them up a couple at a time to let them soak up the soup. It’s like…potato cheese broccoli soup.

posted by Cass on Dec 30

So at lunch time today, we had extra kids from the neighborhood here. I’d planned on packaged broccoli cheddar soup, but I was afraid it would not make enough for everyone to have enough, so I set about figuring out how to extend it. Here’s what we started with:

We made the soup according to the package directions, then added the Normandy Blend veggies, the Cream of Mushroom soup, an extra soup can of water and half a hunk of not-Velveeta. We heated it through and served it with saltines, and it was so. stinkin’. good!

The best news is that the neighborhood kids bailed, so we have plenty of leftovers

posted by Cass on Dec 11

Yeah, I know I didn’t list this in the upcoming recipe list. However, it really is the best roast ever, so I felt like I just had to share! So I am.

I used about a ten pound Boston Butt to make this. And actually, it was so easy that I just called out the directions to my 15 year old as I walked out the door.

Start a bit of oil heating in a large skillet. Combine some lemon pepper seasoning with some flour. Use a proportion like you were breading something to fry it. Roll the roast in that mixture until it is coated well. Then sear it in your hot oil. Put the roast in a covered pan and cook it in the oven at 250 degrees for several hours. Like 3 or 4. But if you have to go a bit longer you can. Or you can put it in the crock pot. See, I’m easy.

Serve the roast with a starch and a veggie the first night. For the lunch the next day, serve the chopped leftovers on hamburger or hot dog buns with a slice of cheese. Yummilicious.

If you were lucky enough to find the pork on sale for 89 cents a pound like I did, then you have 2 meals there for around $10. Less, if you aren’t feeding an army of 9.

posted by Cass on Dec 3

So, I set out to have BBQ ribs the other night. Angel Food had some delightful baby back ribs in their boxes this month, and I thought they would be real tasty. We put the ribs in the pan, and opened the pantry to get the BBQ sauce out, and there wasn’t any. Oops. Then we opened the fridge. I always have a couple bottles in there! And so I did. Two bottles with 1/2 inch of sauce each in them. Double oops. I threw those away, frowned and turned back to the fridge. I pulled out a bottle of sun dried tomato vinaigrette and mixed about 3/4 cup of that with 1/3 cup of honey, and poured that over the ribs. I simmered them in my large electric skillet at 250 for about 4 hours, and they were so good and tender! I pulled the bones out with tongs and piled the meat on a platter. We served them with diced sweet potatoes and field peas. Yum-i-licious.

Now that picture above, it’s not of my ribs. That would mean I remembered to take a picture, which I did not. Bad food blogger, bad food blogger.

posted by Cass on Nov 7

#1. Name a food you like that uses a red sauce or anything red in it.
#2. Name a food you like with whipped cream in it or on it.
#3. Name a food you like with blueberry in it.
#4. Share a recipe for pasta or dessert or a beverage.

man, am I ever late again. Sorry. I don’t mean for it to be this way, but life keeps happening while I am busy making other plans.

1. Umm. Umm….Spaghetti. Strawberry jelly. BLT.
2. Oooh, coffee drinks. Love big tall sweet coffee drinks with whipped cream.
3. Pie. D’uh.
4. Let’s see……… hot chocolate?

3 cups powdered milk
1/2 cup cocoa
3/4 cups sugar
dash of salt

Mix together well, and use 4 tablespoons of the mix to 8 ounces of hot water. Top with mini marshmallows or whipped cream, LOL.

posted by Cass on Nov 6

Ok, maybe not that many, but a lot. Last week, in my cooking segment on my knitting blog, I asked for recipes for Weiner Schnitzel. If you remember, there were pork chops in the AngelFood boxes, and I wanted to try my hand at this wonderful German dish. Allena offered up a recipe and I read through it, said “hmmmm”, and took off running. I made it this afternoon (and tweeted while I was doing it) and it was so good!

You’ll need:
eggs or egg beaters
fine bread crumbs

2 onions
2 jars mushrooms

6 porkchops, beaten thin and cut into two pieces each. BTW, when you get ready to pound your chops, cover them with wax paper. This will prevent flying pig juice from …..ok, enough, you more than get the picture, right?

oil
flour
salt
pepper
water
egg noodles
Please forgive me for not having a picture of these lesser, boring, but oh so necessary ingredients.

After you have pounded the pork chops, dip them in egg and then in bread crumbs. Fry them in a little oil until browned. It may take a couple of panfuls. Start the water for your egg noodles now. Once it boils, add the noodles, turn off the burner, and let them sit for the time it says on the package.

Once they are browned, stack them up on a serving plate, and set them aside.

Throw the onions in that same pan, and brown them. Oh my, doesn’t that smell so good? I do love the smell of frying onions. Even if it does last forever. That and cabbage. Yumm.

After the onions are done to your satisfaction, sprinkle in some flour and stir it around to make roue. Use plenty of flour, so you don’t end up with greasy gravy. Scrape up those pan crispies, too! They have such wonderful flavor! Let it brown as much as you like, and then add the water to complete the gravy. (Does anybody need a gravy lesson? I could do that; it would be a great justification for that flip video I want.)

Add the mushrooms. I got these at a steal. 10 dry ounces for 88 cents. I am going back tomorrow to buy Wal-Mart out of them. I would have done it today, but they say “in brine” and I wanted to make sure they aren’t too salty. They aren’t, they are just right!

Stir them in.

Heat them through and serve: A goodish portion of noodles, a cutlet or two and plenty of sauce ladled over the top of it all.

Doesn’t that look like it would get your ledehosen in a wad?

posted by Cass on Oct 31

Before I get into the Four Foods on Friday, I want to take a few minutes to let you know what’s going on with me. I know that looking over the past couple of weeks of entries here it appears that this blog may be all about Four Foods and other memes, but this is not the case. I desperately want to get this blog back to how it was a couple of months ago, before football became my life and I got so overwhelmed. I was having fun then, and I think you were, too.

Football season ended last Saturday, and only Cheer is left. We’ll be done with that the week of Thanksgiving, but this week, we had a vacation from practices, and I spent the bulk of the week streamlining and catching up and cutting the chaff, so I could have a clear focus and time to put into developing just a few blogs into what I really want them to be. I’m excited about that!

So, what does that mean for you? Well, if you look at the tagline up above, you will see I changed it. It says “Frugal Gourmet meets Scarlett O’Hara”. I really want to specialize in bringing you recipes that don’t break the bank, and still have people asking for more, more, more of that, so one thing I plan to do is provide recipes for some of the foods that come in the Angel Food boxes. Dollar for Dollar, ounce for ounce, it doesn’t get any more budget friendly than Angel Food.

Okay, that’s a huge long introduction, and I still have more to say, but I am going to force myself to shut up and move on to the Four Foods on Friday. Here are this week’s questions:

#1. What kind of pretzels are your favorite?
#2. What’s your favorite way to eat pancakes?
#3. Do you make garlic bread from scratch or buy frozen?
#4. Share a recipe that calls for mozzarella cheese.

1. I like the little rods, and I especially lke them with peanut butter. I put a dollop of peanut butter in a bowl with a handful of pretzels, and dip the pretzels in it. So good!

2. On a plate in front of me, LOL. Seriously, I like honey on oatmeal pancakes, and maple syrup on regular white flour pancakes and either on whole wheat pancakes.

3. I do both, depending on time, inclination and finances.

4. I use mozzarella pretty much exclusively, because it is lower in saturated fat than other hard cheeses, and I have to watch my cholesterol. The recipe that first comes to mind is my lasagna, but that is neither quick, nor easy, nor inexpensive, so I will skip it. What about stuffed shells?

Stuffed Shells

Large pasta shells
8 ounces mozzarella
8 ounces cottage cheese
10 ounces frozen spinach
2 eggs
salt
pepper
jar of prepared spaghetti sauce

Cook the pasta. Mix the other ingredients, except the sauce, together. When the shells are done, fill them with the cheese mixture. Pour the sauce over the top, bake until hot and bubbly. Serve with salad and garlic bread.

posted by Cass on Oct 24

It’s week #52 for Four Foods on Friday!

#1. Name something you use cream cheese in/on.
#2. Do you use yogurt in any recipes?
#3. Macaroni salad. What do you like/put in yours?
#4. Share a recipe that you use sour cream in.

1. I use cream cheese on turnovers. Yum!
2. No, but I would love to learn how to make cucumber yogurt sauce. And also the gyros that goes under it..
3. I made this tonight! I used radiatorefor the pasts. I mixed a packet of ranch mix with 3/4 cup or so of mayo. I added canned mushrooms, tomatoes, and some salad topping. It looked like this:

and it was sooooooooooo good!

4. Another recipe? Geez! You’re killing me here!
Okay, Easy Cheater Beef Stroganoff

Diced leftover steak or roast, or meatballs, or stew meat, browned
Cream of mushroom soup
mushrooms, canned or fresh
onion, if desired
garlic
sour cream

Brown the onions if you are using them. Throw the garlic and mushrooms (with a bit of the liquid if canned) and diced beef in the pan. Add the soup. When it’s bubbly, add the sour cream. Serve over egg noodles.

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 Sep 26

#1. Melon. What’s your favorite kind?
#2. Orange citrus. What’s your favorite - oranges, nectarines, navel oranges, tangerines, etc.
#3. Oreos. What kind is your favorite? (Don’t eat Oreos? What about olives?)
#4. Pot pie. Share a recipe. (No pot pie recipe? What about a casserole or some other hot meal you bake?)

This is my first time playing Four Foods on Friday, and I am excited about it. Of course, if I didn’t like to talk about food, I wouldn’t be having a cooking blog, now would I?

1. I like honeydew the best, I think, but I eat mine with salt. In fact, I eat all melons with salt, so there ya go.

2. Oh my. I don’t know about the orange citrus, but maybe tangelos. Tangerines are too small for the effort involved, LOL.

3. Chocolate stuffed Oreos. D’uh.

4. Take some cooked deboned chicken, canned will do if that’s what you’ve got. Throw in a bag of mixed vegetables, or a few cans of different vegetables, if that’s what you’ve got. Add a large can of cream of chicken soup, or cream of mushroom if that’s what you’ve got. Top with garlic biscuit mix, or frozen biscuits or canned biscuits if that’s what you’ve got. Cook until the filling is bubbly and the bread is browned. Can you tell that I am all about using what you’ve got?