Cass Cooks, Too!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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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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