Homemade Cooking From-Scratch Projects

Just because I haven't posted as many homemade projects over the last year doesn't mean that we haven't been doing them!  Here is a roundup of some of our projects from summer-fall 2011.

Peach Ice Cream - This was super fun to try with the girls - what kid wouldn't want to make ice cream?  I had gotten this large ice cream maker at a yard sale a while back, and we had never used it before.  It is the kind that uses rock salt and ice, which, let me tell you, is a bit of a messy process.  The resulting ice cream tasted fresh and delicious, but I had trouble getting it the right consistency.  In the end I just put it in the freezer to harden it up.  This project was one that was all about the experience, rather than about saving money and doing it on a regular basis.

Wheat Thins - This is a great recipe and shockingly easy.  We have made them a number of times - whenever I can't get a good deal on store-bought crackers.  My Silpat baking matis so helpful for rolling them out and transferring them to the cookie sheet.

Kale Chips - This was one of the many, many recipes using kale and other greens that we made during our CSA summer.  I wouldn't say that anyone in the family was ready to replace regular chips with these, but most of us liked them.  It is pretty great when all three of your preshool kids are asking for more kale!

Tomato Sauce - I had never really made homemade tomato sauce before, and I was excited to try it.  The first recipe we made was this one from Jamie Oliver.  I really liked the fresh taste, although my husband thought it was a bit bland.  My 5 year old enjoyed getting to chop the tomatoes!

Fried Okra - When I was in kindergarten in North Carolina in the '80's, one of my favorite foods in the cafeteria was fried okra!  It was fun to recall that memory and try making it myself.  I think I was the member of the family who ate most of this, but I certainly enjoyed it.  You do have to watch out for the tough, chewy pods though.

More Tomato Sauce - Near the end of the summer, the farm had an awesome deal on ten pounds of tomatoes!  I decided to go for it and made another big batch of sauce.  With this recipe I first blanched and skinned the tomatoes.  This sauce had fewer veggies and I thought tasted more like a jarred sauce (in a good way).

Raspberry Lemonade - This one is pretty self-explanatory.  I think I made this after our raspberries from the farm were a bit manhandled by "helpful" little hands!

Potato Chips - This was so much fun and something else I have always wanted to try.  We had a great time harvesting potatoes at the farm, and then we came home and made potato chips.  The key with these is of course to slice them as thinly as possible.  I don't have a mandolin cutter, so I just had to do the best I could with a nice.  The thinnest chips came out the crispiest, but all of them were absolutely delicious.  Homemade chips do not stay crispy long, however, so this is something to make and enjoy on a weekend, rather than to stockpile for long-term snacking.

I really love trying new homemade cooking projects, especially with my kids.  Sometimes I find that making the item is a great way to save money, and I incorporate it into my routine.  Other times it is just a fun experience to see how something is made.  It is really important to me that my children understand where their food comes from and that they are involved in preparing it.

What do you like to make homemade?

Wegmans Meal of the Week: Looking Ahead to Fall!

There are some good deals on early fall produce this week at Wegmans.  I'm glad; with school now in session I'm looking forward to fall weather and flavors.  This week's meal is an easy but hardy one-dish meal; you could probably do it in a slow cooker as well.

Pork, Apples, and Potatoes 


loosely based on this recipe

Ingredients:
1 Wegmans Whole Bone-In Pork Should Blade Roast - $1.29/lb.
1 5 lb. Bag Wegmans White Potatoes - $2.49 (use half)
1 Tote Gala Apples - $.89/lb (use half)

From the Pantry:
thyme, pepper bay leaf (optional)
chicken bouillon or broth (optional)
oil
cornstarch

Side:
1 bag Wegmans bagged salad - $1.29

Brown pork roast.  Cover with water and/or broth and spices and simmer for several hours until cooked and tender.  Add cubed potatoes and sliced apples in the last 15 minutes.  Thicken with a mixture of two tablespoons cornstarch and two tablespoons water.

Cost:
Assuming a 3 lb. pork roast ($3.87) and a 5 lb. bag of apples ($4.45), the total for all the ingredients purchased comes to $12.10.  But, this recipe should feed a family of four twice, plus the the remaining apples and potatoes can be used for other recipes.  So the total cost for one dinner for a family of four is approximately $4.90, including the bag of salad.

Easy Summer Supper

This week I am in North Carolina celebrating the 4th of July with my parents and my eight siblings.  And I have a fun surprise here for the blog - my mom is going to be guest blogging this week!  My mom is an amazing woman who taught me how to manage and stretch money, and who always had a homemade dinner on the table every night, even while raising nine children.  Hope you enjoy her posts!

Summer is a wonderful time to plan menus as there is so much fresh local produce available, sometimes including produce from our own yards.  The lighter meals of summer are also a nice change from the soups, stews, and roasts of the cold months.  I have been digging out some old favorite summer recipes which are easy and quick, but also look spectacular and are sure to be well-received by hungry husbands and children.  One of the recipes I would like to share is for a shrimp dish that needs no accompaniment except some crusty bread and cold sweet tea. 

                                  Easy Summer Shrimp Bowl

1 -1/2 T. olive oil

1T. butter (unsalted or salted)

1 – ¼ lb. large shrimp, shelled

1 lb. frozen shoepeg corn (or any white corn—but it must be white!), thawed

2 large fresh local tomatoes, diced (or a small basket of cherry tomatoes, halved)

1 small onion, diced

 1 cup (about) fresh basil leaves, torn

1 lime, juiced

Put the oil and butter in a pan and melt on med-high heat.  Add onion, corn, and tomatoes and cook until hot—5 or 10 minutes.

Remove the vegetables to a serving bowl.  Then cook the shrimp—still on med-high heat—until pink.

Add the shrimp to the cooked vegetables and mix.

Then add the basil and the lime juice, toss, and serve with the aforementioned crusty bread and sweet iced tea.

Homemade Crackers

When I saw a link to Homemade Wheat Thins recently, I got all excited.  Trying to make homemade crackers has been on my to-do list for a while, since my girls love crackers.  They can eat a whole box in a matter of two or three days.

This recipe looked pretty quick and easy and used ingredients I always have on hand, so on a recent afternoon we gave it a try.  The dough was very easy to mix up and roll out.

I think my Silpat Baking Mat was key to the ease of rolling these very thin and not dealing with sticking.  I love that mat!  The cutout crackers were stable enough that the girls could help me transfer them to the baking sheet.  (Of course, I wasn't worrying about perfect shapes!)

I sprinkled them with Kosher salt.  Mine needed the longer end of the baking time - 9-10 minutes.  

Verdict: easy and delicious!  They seem to keep well (although we've eaten them up in a few days!), but they're not quite as crisp as store-bought crackers.

As for the cost breakdown - the biggest expense here is for the whole stick of butter (for a double recipe). Still, I estimate that a double recipe cost me about $1.00.  I don't know exactly how many crackers it made; next time I plan to weigh them to compare it to a box of Wheat Thins.  My guess is that I made the same or a little more than a store bought box.  

Thus the homemade version would be a significant savings over the regular price of approximately $3.49/box.  With a sale and a coupon, I can often get crackers for $1.50/box, and occasionally $1.00/box.  So only if I find the best deal would it not be cheaper to make them myself.  Plus, I'm sure that the homemade version is much healthier!

Check out more great frugal tips at Frugal Fridays.

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Homemade Tortilla Chips

I feel like it is so long since I've done a DIY cooking or baking post!  Since Baby #3 came along, it is just so much harder to spend my days making homemade English muffins or bagels!  Still, I absolutely love trying new "from-scratch" projects, and slowly, slowly I'm getting back into them again.

Last week, I was watching some short videos on Swagbucks to earn more bucks, and of course I clicked over to the Food Network videos.  Paula Dean had a video on frying your own tortilla chips, and it looked so easy.  We love chips and salsa around here, and I'm always looking for ways to save on our weekend snack.

As luck would have it, I had just bought two 12-packs of Wegmans corn tortillas for $.50 each, so I decided to try this project that very day.

I fried the chips in canola oil, since that's the oil that I keep around for general baking.  I put about 3/4 inch in my stainless steel skillet, and heated it on my electric stove at about medium high.  I did have to keep turning the temperature down as I cooked, since of course electric stoves don't keep consistent heat.  The biggest problem I have with frying is that I don't have an electric skillet that keeps a constant temperature, so I just have to do my best with adjusting the dial.

Really, it was pretty simple to fry the chips.  After heating the oil until it bubbled when I splashed in a drop of water, I fried each chip for a minute or so on each side.  It was fairly easy to tell when they were done, because they started to really look like chips.  After they came out, I laid them on paper towels to soak up the extra oil and sprinkled them right away with Kosher salt.

The chips were attractive and delicious!  They reminded me of the kind of tortilla chips you get at a nice Mexican restaurant. Since I cut the tortillas into quarters, a package of 12 made 48 thick, substantial chips.  I'll bet that's about as much (at least by weight) as you get in a regular sized bag of tortilla chips, for which I pay $2.50/bag for Wegmans brand.  The packages of tortillas I used are over $1 regular price, but I bet if you purchased those huge bags of corn tortillas you could get as low as $.50 for 12, or even lower.

Of course, any time you fry individual pieces one by one it is a little time-consuming.  And since I certainly couldn't hold a fussy baby while working with hot oil, I had to do this in fits and starts.  Also, although the chips still tasted good a couple of days later, they weren't quite as crispy as store-bought chips.  However, it was neat to make a snack that was a little more traditional "chip" than our homemade corn chips.

I think this project would be great for a weekend or party, or for a Mexican dinner if you have a little extra time.  I definitely plan to try it again.

Check out more great frugal ideas at Frugal Fridays.

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Minty Iced Tea

My mom taught me how to make a delicious iced tea with fresh mint.  I find this tea to be very refreshing in the summer, and it can really give me a little burst of energy on a hot afternoon! 

The tea is simple to make with regular black tea, sugar, and fresh mint.

First I make a simply syrup on the stove by mixing equal parts granulated sugar and water and stirring until the sugar dissolves.  I heat this slowly until it simmers, adding a few springs of mint once the sugar is pretty much dissolved.

Then I simply take the pot off the heat, cover it, and the syrup steep for a while, at least 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile I've brewed a big pitcher of hot tea.  Once the syrup is steeped and cooled a little, I mix it into the tea.  Then I usually let the pitcher cool down for a couple of hours before refrigerating it.

For a gallon of tea, I use 4 or 5 tea bags, 2/3-3/4 c. water and sugar, and a few springs of mint.  That makes the tea lightly sweetened, which I prefer.  Of course, you can use any proportions that suit your tastes.  Enjoy!

Check out Frugal Fridays at Life as Mom and Mrs. Moneysaver.

Using the Garden's Bounty

I have found that one of the suprisingly biggest challenges of maintaining our garden is harvesting and using all the produce in a timely fashion.  Since our girls are still so young, it's basically just two adults that are consuming everything.  While I love to share our harvest, I also am trying to get a good return on our investment, so we try to eat everything that we can.

In the two years that we've been seriously gardening, I've come up with a few different ways to use the vegetables we've planted.  Here are some of my favorite ides:

Bell Peppers:
 - raw with dip
 - in salads
 - sauteed with onions
 - diced and frozen for future use

Tomatoes:
- sliced with some Italiain dressing or balsamic vinegar and olive oil
- in homemade salsa (here's a favorite of mine)
- in salads
- to make sauce (I haven't done this much - would love your favorite recipes!)

Cucumbers:
- raw with dip
- in salads
- homemade refrigerator pickles

Radishes:
- raw with dip
- in salads
- sauteed with their greens (different, but not bad at all)

Basil:
- pesto! (which can be frozen in ice cube trays)
- dried
- soup, pizza, pasta, etc. - anything Italian

Mint:
- iced tea
- hot tea
- minted roasted potatoes
- dried

What are some of your favorite ways to use your garden's bounty?

Homemade Granola Bars

Guest Post by Amanda

As a working mother of two children, with a daily, long DC-area commute, I typically don’t have time to eat a healthy breakfast at home before heading out to work. I also commonly find myself in need of a healthy, filling snack in my desk or purse, e.g., when a meeting runs late or I get stuck in traffic. I noticed about a year ago that I was constantly buying granola bars! My son ate them, my husband ate them, I ate them- and we were always running out! Additionally, I found that the flavors I really liked were typically hard to find on sale or get for a good price with coupons. Out of frustration with being out of granola bars- AGAIN- I sought out a solution to make them myself. I found this recipe from smitten kitchen, which I found to be remarkably similar to a Nature Valley oat and honey bar,with the welcome changes of it being a good bit softer and less crumbly, and having yummy dried berries. I’ve adapted the recipe to suit my family’s tastes, but it is super flexible and easily changed. Here is my adapted version:

Ingredients

2 cups old fashioned oats

1 cup sliced almonds

1 cup shredded coconut loosely packed

½ cup milled flax seed

2/3 cup honey

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon coarse Kosher salt

1 tablespoon extra light olive oil or Canola oil

1 package dried mixed berries

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 °F. Line a rectangular baking dish with parchment paper and trim off excess.

Dump oatmeal, almonds, coconut, and flax seed together on a sheet pan and bake for 10 to 15 min, stirring about halfway through, until lightly browned. I used unsulphured coconut flakes from the health food store, which are quite fragrant when toasting, so I know that when I smell it- it’s almost ready. While the mixture is toasting, measure honey, vanilla, salt, and oil into a large bowl. Add the toasted ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until everything is well coated. Pour back into your prepared baking dish, and press firmly with a flat potato masher (you can use a scrap of parchment between masher and mixture if you feel like the masher is sticking) until you think that the mixture is well packed, or you get sick of dealing with this.

Bake for about 25 min, until light golden brown. Longer will give a more crisp bar, but I prefer mine a little softer. Cool in pan on a wire cooling rack. When cool, remove with parchment attached, and cut into squares with a large chef’s knife. (I catch all the crumbs and use them for yogurt.) Store the bars in an airtight container on the counter. I think that they will last about a week, but that has never been a problem in my family!

Commentary:

Since I’m always short on time, I find that planning ahead (especially for the morning rush) is the best strategy for my family. I usually whip up a batch on Sunday nights after the kids are in bed.  I put everything in the oven to toast, prep the wet ingredients, and try to clean up kitchen/pick up toys/pack lunches, etc. while they bake. I cut them into bars and drop them into our snack bags the next morning. These may not be much cheaper than buying granola bars, but I know what all of the ingredients are, and I can customize them to my family’s taste. Plus, I can whip up a batch anytime I like. I keep all of the ingredients on hand at home, and I was pleased to find out that I can buy most of these in bulk at my local health food co-op.

Easy Variations:

Maple-Almond: swap maple syrup for honey and almond extract for vanilla, omit berries

Cinnamon: stir in a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon with the wet ingredients

Peanut butter: add about 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter with the wet ingredients

Use your imagination to customize these to suit your family! Enjoy!

Amanda is a working mom to two beautiful children, aged 1 and 3, and the wife of an incredibly sweet and helpful husband. She struggles to apply frugal living concepts to their busy lives and find a balance between saving money and spending time. Amanda lives with her family in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.

Bread Machine Sandwich Bread

The time has come to share my recipe for bread machine whole wheat sandwich bread!  I'm proud of this because I actually developed this recipe myself, using two different recipes as a base and with a lot of trial and error.  As you may know, I bake almost all of our bread from scratch; I only buy it if I can get it for pennies on the dollar.   This required having an easy bread recipe that I could make weekly or even more often for sandwiches and toast.

I developed it because I was having trouble finding a recipe that fit all my criteria, which are:
1) mostly whole wheat
2) soft and a little sweet, rather than incredibly dense like some whole wheat breads
3) risen high enough to be a good size for sandwiches
4) using regular ingredients, not making me have to purchse anything exotic or expensive

Here's the recipe I developed:
1-1/8 c. warm water
1 T. white vinegar
1 egg
1-1/2 T. oil
3 T. brown sugar
1 c. bread flour
2-1/3 c. whole wheat flour
1 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1-1/2 t. yeast
Put everything in the bread machine in the order listed or in the order recommended by the manufacturer.  Set the machine to "dough" cycle.  When the cycle is finished, remove dough to a greased loaf pan and let rise (covered) in a cold oven for 45 minutes.  Remove cover from pan, leaving pan in oven, and set oven to 350 degrees.  Bake for about 30 minutes, including preheating time.  Let cool for a couple of minutes; remove from pan.

As you can see, there are a few unconventional steps or ingredients in the recipe.  The vinegar and egg help the bread to rise, despite the predominance of whole wheat flour.  I also found that leaving the bread in the oven while it preheats (violating every baking rule) prevented the bread from flattening when I moved it around after rising.

The bread is really delicious, especially on the first day it's made, although I often freeze some slices.  The one aspect I'm still working on is that it can be a bit crumbly, making it not as good for holding together a hearty sandwich.  I'm always open to suggestions for improvement!

Check out Frugal Fridays at Life as Mom and Mrs. Moneysaver.

Snow Cream!

I was craving ice cream the night before last, and while we didn't have any in the freezer, we sure had a lot of snow outside!  I knew I had read about people making snow cream, and a quick Google search turned up the basic recipe: simply milk, sugar, vanilla extract, and, of course, fresh clean snow!

 

Since Wednesday night was the night after our second January blizzard, there was plenty of fresh snow!  I just opened the back door and scooped some off our deck.  (Disclaimer: I would definitely only have done this with fresh snow.  But my girls eat snow anyway, fresh or not.  You have to eat a pound of dirt before you die, right?)

For my mixing bowl full of snow I probably used about a cup of milk and 3/4 cup of sugar, adding gradually and mixing until it seemed the right consistency.  I also added at least a teaspoon of vanilla.

 

We all enjoyed the finished product, which was sweet, milky, and very cold!  My husband compared the consistency to Italian ice.  

This was definitely a frugal way to make ice cream -- no need for an ice cream maker or even for heavy cream!  And my girls were thrilled; it will definitely be a fun memory for them.  My husband said it was the sort of thing that no kids on the playground would believe that their mom really did.  I considered that a high complement.  

Making snow cream was a Finer Thing in Life.

Adventures in Doughnut Making!

I have been wanting to try making homemade doughnuts absolutely forever!  I mean, I've made homemade bagels, tortillas, granola bars - doughnuts just seemed like the next one to try.

As luck would have it, my February/March issue of Taste of Home included a feature on doughnut making, so Saturday morning I gave it a try.  I chose the yeast doughnut recipe, as opposed to the cake doughtnut recipe, which used baking powder.  (Like any true daughter of the South, I have a weakness for a fluffy Krispy Kreme doughnut, and these seemed similar.)

I started these at about 8:00 or 8:30 on Saturday morning, and we had them for brunch at about 11:00; so they are definitely time-consuming.  It's not that the process is difficult; it was mostly the two risings.  The dough turned out very smooth and easy to work with.

I don't have a doughnut or biscuit cutter, so I use a large glass for the doughnut and a small jar to cut the hole.

Now, the dough was supposed to double in size both at the first rising and when the doughnuts were shaped, but mine did not seem to rise much at all either time.  I conjecture that this may have had to do with the yeast, which was two packets that had been a while in my pantry, instead of in the fridge with my other yeast.  Also, on that snowy morning our kitchen was somewhat cold, which may have affected the rising.  I think the stunted rising may have contributed to my subsequent problem.

I actually did not need a huge amount of oil to fry the doughnuts, and they turned out a beautiful golden color.  While still warm, I dipped them in a thin powdered sugar and water glaze, and topped them with sprinkles or powdered sugar.  I couldn't believe how much they looked like real doughnuts!

However, there was one catch.  When my husband and I excitedly bit into the first batch, we discovered that some of the doughnuts were still doughy inside.  Some were just about completely cooked, but a few were definitely inedible.  

I was pretty disappointed (after 3 hours of work!), so I thought it was worth it to try Michael's suggestion of baking them for a little while at a low temperature, even though I wasn't sure what that would do to the glaze.  We tried first at 250, but ultimately switched to 325.  Actually, it worked.  The glaze did really melt or run, and the doughnuts cooked through.  It definitely dried them out a little, but they were still tasty.  In every other respect, the doughnuts were delicious and very authentic.

I think that if the doughnuts had risen more and been less dense, they might have cooked more thoroughly.  Also, I think the oil getting increasingly hotter as I continued to fry them may have made the later doughnuts brown too quickly, before they were cooked.  This is a problem that is hard to avoid without an electric skillet or a deep fryer, and it is why I have been somewhat leery of deep frying.  I'll be looking for one of those on the yard sale circuit this summer!

Despite the slight setback, I'm rather more into making the doughnuts now than otherwise.  I might try the cake doughnut recipe next time.  And I'll be sure to invite some friends over, because a whole batch of doughnuts is a lot for a small family to eat!

Check out more DIY projects over at A Soft Place to Land.