Cass Cooks, Too!

You know, sometimes I wonder why I even make menus. It’s not like we use them, becasue, out of this list from last week:

Chicken pot pie
Weiner Schnitzel
Fried Chicken
Beans and Rice
Hamburger Helper (sue me)
Home-made Pizza

We actually made chicken pot pie and weiner schnitzel. I guess that I do it to assure myself that there is actual food here to eat, ROFL! And also, so that if no one has a specific request, i at least have a plan. I’m pretty lenient with the meals, I guess: if someone asks for something, and I have the ingredients on hand, I don’t mind having a substitution. Besides, this way I only have to come up with 2 or 3 new ideas when it’s time to make a menu again.

So, here we go for this week:
Hamburgers
Fried Chicken
Beans and Rice
Chicken Fajitas
Home-made Pizza
Breakfast Casserole and fruit

#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.

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?

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

I guess I am one of the lone holdouts this week, actually posting my menu on Monday an all. What can I say, it was a jam packed weekend. This week, we are back to cheer practice and also, my husbad has started a job that has him working evenings, so we are back to the quick and easy, tempered by the fact that we will eat our main meal at lunch some days. Yeah, life is never boring here–we just don’t do the same thing long enough to create a rut, let alone get stuck in one. Anyway, on to the plans:

Chicken pot pie
Weiner Schnitzel
Fried Chicken
Beans and Rice
Hamburger Helper (sue me)
Home-made Pizza

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.

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.

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!

Well, so, here it is Monday again. I apologize for my lack of posts here, but I have been pretty much sick as a dog since last Tuesday night. I am still sick, but I have decided that I can’t waste any more time being that way, and it’s time to suck up and deal. I’ll let you know how that works out for me, unless it works out badly, and then I will be in he hospital and unable to get back to you right away. On to the menu stuff.

This will be the week we eat out of the freezer and pantry for real, with no grocery shopping at all. Should be quite an adventure, and I love a good adventure.

Seafood Broccoli Pasta
Burritos
Chicken and Pastry
Spaghetti
Pork Tenderloin
Beans and Rice
Leftovers

As I get ready to post this, Org Junkie is down, so I don’t know that I will be able to link in with her or not, but it’s Monday, and that means it is time for a menu, so let’s make one anyway! We are continuing our eat cheap quest (of course), and this week’s menu reflects some tasty but cheap choices.

Chicken patty sandwiches with cheese and fruit
Home made mushroom pizza
Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo and salad
Macaroni and cheese
Fried chicken
Seafood and pasta with veggies
Burritos