Angie's Favorite Casserole

I had my sister's kids over for the weekend which meant cooking for ten kids. I needed something quick and easy that would satisfy a lot of different tastes.  So we whipped up a favorite that my family has been eating for years.  It is not super popular with grown ups because it's pretty plain (although I love it), but it's easy to make and kids can't get enough of it. In our house we call it "Angie's Favorite Casserole."

Start with a bag of noodles. Egg noodles are best, but any noodle will work. Cook them and drain them.

 Now add a can of tomato soup (or a can of pizza/spaghetti sauce if your kids actually enjoy flavor).

 Chop up a bunch of ham. Whole ham or sliced lunch meat will work.

 Add a pound of cheese.

 

Mix it all up and pour into a baking dish.

*I swear I took a picture of this all in a baking dish, but I can't find the picture, so you will just have to imagine it*

Bake for a while (let's say 30 minutes at 400 degrees), or until the sauce is warm and the cheese melts.


That's it. Super simple and very kid friendly.

And if you don't eat it all (or if you double the batch) you can pour the extra into a giant ziplock bag an freeze it for later.

Everything looks less appetizing in a bag....

Marcia

Dorito Taco Salad

Here is one of my favorite (super easy!) recipes:

Bag of Chips
Head of Lettuce
Pound of Taco Meat (beef, chicken, or turkey, precooked and seasoned)
Tomato or two
Cheese, Olives, or Green Onions if you feel like it
And some Thousand Island Dressing


Chop it, Crush it, and Mix it all together.  Eat right away.
It's totally that simple.

Shall we go over that one more time?

Get a bag of Doritos.

Crush them up in a bowl.

Chop up a head of lettuce (or use bagged salad).

Put the lettuce in the bowl with the chips.

Chop up a tomato (or green onion, or cheese, or olives, or whatever).

Dump it in the bowl.

Warm up some pre-cooked taco meat (you should be precooking all your meat so that meal times go faster).

Time Out!  Still using a package mix for taco seasoning?  Checkout Kate's awesome copy cat recipe for Lawry's Taco seasoning here!

Toss the meat onto the salad.

Get a bottle of 1000 Island dressing.

Pour a cup or so onto the salad and mix. Mix, mix, mix.

That's it. Enjoy!


Marcia

Recipe Time: Leftover Easter Ham

Originally posted in April 2014

Raise your hand if you made ham for Easter and now have some (or most) of it sitting in the fridge?  "Leftovers" often has such an ugly ring to it, but with so many delicious ways to use that ham, your family will be begging you to make extra ham next time, just so you can make one of these great dinners later!

A quick thrifty tip: I bought the ham when it was on sale at Christmas time, and froze it.  As a matter of fact, they were so cheap, I bought ten of them.  We love ham.  I should have bought more.

We love ham so much, this is my last one. :(

HAM FRIED RICE
3 boxes of Fried Rice flavor Rice-A-Roni
3-5 c leftover ham
3 T butter

Chop ham into bite-sized pieces.  Heat butter in large skillet, then fry ham in butter.  When ham is sizzling and browned in spots and smells like bacon, pour 3 packages of Rice-A-Roni into skillet and follow directions.

BREAKFAST BURRITOS
3 c leftover ham
15 eggs
1 1/2 c milk
1-2 green peppers, chopped
1/2 onion, diced

Chop ham into small pieces and fry in butter.  Add green peppers and onions, and cook for just a couple of minutes, til the green peppers turn brighter green.  Crack eggs into medium bowl, whisk just to combine and then add milk.  Pour eggs/milk mixture into skillet with ham and cook scramble-style.  When eggs are done, pour cheese over top, allow to melt, then stir to coat.
Heat tortillas and fill with eggs.



Marcia's leftover ham (ready to be made into dinner tonight!)

HAM AND CHEESY POTATOES
7 medium potatoes
12 oz sour cream
1 T dried minced onions
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 c milk
2 c grated cheddar cheese
2-3 c leftover ham, chopped

Cut potatoes into bite-sized pieces, leaving skins on.  Boil until soft.  Meanwhile, mix all other ingredients in medium bowl.  When potatoes are soft, drain and spread in 9x13 pyrex baking dish.  Pour cheese/sour cream mixture over potatoes - do not stir.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Kate's leftover ham (we like it a little almost-burned on the outside)

My Husband's Favorite: RELIVING EASTER DINNER
Wrap ham in foil and heat in 300 degree oven.
Make instant mashed potatoes, heat a can or two of vegetables, find some rolls, reheat gravy.
Essentially eat Easter Dinner all over again.


What's your favorite leftover ham recipe?

Kate

Gardens: They're Fun Stuff!

It's just about Springtime, or it's going to be soon.  (I promise, Boston, it's going to be, soon!)  And springtime around here, means Garden Time!

Seriously, my family loves having a garden.  They love planting, they love watching all those little seedlings poke up through the dirt, they love making yarn-and-stick trellises for beans and peas... okay, they don't totally love weeding, but they don't mind too much.  Many hands make for light work and all that.

We had a great garden in Utah, no garden at all in Massachusetts, and have big plans for one here.  We can't wait!!

No matter where you live, or what your circumstances are, there are endless reasons to grow a garden!

You Will Save Money
Growing your own food can save a lot on your grocery budget.  A single head of lettuce will continue to give leaves all summer long.  For the same price, you can buy either four cucumbers or one cucumber plant that may produce dozens of cucumbers over the next few months.  From a money standpoint, it just makes sense to plant a garden.

It's a Teaching Tool
Planting a garden provides learning opportunities for you children that can't easily be duplicated other places.  Hard work, patience, and the satisfaction of a job well done will be priceless lessons throughout your child's life.  Memories of being out in the sunlight and fresh air with your kids will be way better than those memories you have of sitting on the couch and watching Power Rangers for the six thousandth time.

There are also a lot of very practical lessons to be learned.  A child who watches a seed grow will understand plants better than the child who simply reads about them in a class room.  Younger children can learn skills like counting, color matching, and sorting as the learn to identify which plants are ripe an ready to pick, and which are not.

Most of All: Gardens are FUN!
Free food at your fingertips all summer long, what could be more fun than that?

My little cutie, watering the peppers.

Make sure to plant "snacks" like snap peas, cherry tomatoes, or carrots.  When your kids are playing outside and get hungry, they can simply go get a snack from the garden instead of coming into the house and begging you for a sugary treat.  We always have what we call a "salsa garden" because we'd just go out and pick three kinds of peppers, tomatoes, garlic, onions, and whip up a quick salsa.  Nothing better.

Enjoy!


Kate

Grilling Bread

Five months ago, my family moved from super urban, beachside Massachusetts, to fairly rural smallish-town Washington.  And we love it here.  LOVE it.  We love the trees, we love the green, we love the big yard.  We don't totally love the weather - we miss the snow, and it does rain kind of a lot here - but the sun shows up enough to keep us happy.

One kind of fun (in the "let's have an adventure!" line of fun) thing about living here is that when the wind shows up, we often lose our power.  Last fall, we had what was apparently a pretty unusual windstorm and lost power for over a day, but usually it's just for a few hours.

The other night, we lost our power for just a few hours.  Really, no big deal.  We know enough now to fill up all the big pots and pitchers as soon as the wind picks up (having an electric well means no power = no water!), and we know where the candles and flashlights are, so no big deal.  We even got to eat hot food anyway, since this time we had a grill, so my husband just cooked us up some burgers and hotdogs.

It was just a fun night, spent hanging out together in the candlelight.

Except... that when the power went out I had just finished kneading a batch of bread dough, and had set it aside to rise.  I was hopeful that perhaps our power would be back on in time to bake it in the oven, but no such luck.

But as always, new ideas spring from necessity.

Ok, so cooking bread over an open flame is probably not what you'd call a new idea... but it was a new one around here.  I've made lots of things on a grill, including some bread-like items like pizza.  And I've cooked biscuits and things over a campfire, but always in a dutch oven.  I've never actually tried to "bake" a loaf of bread over a fire, or on a grill, but I've got a fun husband who always likes to try new things, and otherwise I'd just have to toss it all anyway, so we decided to give it a shot.

We quickly ran into a problem: when I'd set it to rise, I'd put it in a preheated oven.  And while I did pull it out to punch it down and let it re-rise, I'd left it in that oven the whole time I was waiting for the power to come back on.

I think it got too hot, for too long, even in a turned-off oven, and the yeast died.  Because it sure didn't rise again after that first time.

Honestly, I wanted to toss it in the trash at that point.  But my husband pointed out that the grill was still nice and hot, and that we had nothing to lose, so we (he) went for it.

After half an hour on the grill, it smelled incredible.  The scent of fresh-baked bread, but also kind of a smoky, roasted smell.  Heavenly.

Unfortunately, that was the only good part.  It looked ridiculous, like an enormous chicken breast (complete with grill marks!).  And it didn't get even a little bit done inside, so it was still really doughy.  A total failure.

But we are super interested in trying again, next time perhaps with not-over-risen-dead-yeast dough!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Kate

Be the COOL Mom this St. Patrick's Day

Some holidays I'm totally on my "A" game.  I've got gifts purchased, activities planned, and fun foods all lined up.  From the time the kids wake up, when they open their lunch at school, at dinner that night, and all the way until bedtime it's back-to-back to back fun and celebration.  And that's not just for the big holidays.  We celebrate the little ones too.  Last Veteran's Day my five year old came out of his room proudly wearing every ounce of camouflage clothing he owned.  One year we hosted a costume party for Presidents Day.  We wore cotton ball beards and top hats, made campaign posters, and gave acceptance speeches.  It was great fun (my only regret is that it took me the next two years to grow out the bangs I had hastily cut in an effort to make my Sarah Palin costume more authentic).  It's always so much fun.

But some times it's just not.

Some holidays not only am I not on my "A" game, I'm not even on my "Z" game.  Often I don't have a game at all.  The kids come home from school waving their bags of Valentine goodies, and I think, "Is it Valentine's Day today?  Really?  Hmm."  I'm a human being with finite time and brain power.  Some days are just not as exciting as others.  And that's okay.

So maybe today is one of those days for you.  Maybe you didn't even realize it's St. Patrick's Day today.  But chances are your kids know.  And if they aren't talking about it before school, you can bet they will be talking about it after school.  Do you have the strength in you to make today special?  (It's okay if you don't.)  But if you're up for it, follow us on a journey toward maximum fun with minimal effort.

We scoured the globe (AKA Pinterest) for the quickest, easiest ways to make you a holiday seem fun using stuff you probably already have at home, and without actually taking too much effort.  Any one of these will probably be enough to convince your kids you are awesome.

Before School:

If you are lucky enough to realize what day it is before the kids leave for school, here are a couple of fun things you can do.

Food- A few drops of green food color and your scrambled eggs just became green eggs and ham!

Clothes- Put on a green tee shirt.  How hard is that?  If you've got a strip of green fabric, tie it around your child's arm and declare them a member of the Leprechaun Army!  If you have any other color of fabric, draw a green shamrock on it, tie it around your child's arm, and declare them a member of the Leprechaun Special Forces.

Hair- A little bit of food coloring (or Jell-o or Kool-Aid) will turn lighter hair  a beautiful green.  It only takes a minute to do, but will make your kids happy all day.  Disclaimer: be careful here, it might take awhile to fade completely.

Prank- Make green toilet water and leprechaun footprints.  This looks super funny, but I honestly don't know if it would work at my house.  I think a little bum would sit on it without even noticing, then I'd just have green footprints smeared on somebody's hind end.


After School:

Food-
Green peppers look like shamrocks when you slice them.  Eat them raw with ranch, on a slice of pizza, or on top of a casserole.

Cut thin apple slices and shape the edges to look like shamrocks.

Make leprechaun juice with sprite and lime sherbet.


Craft- Long strips of paper folded and stapled into hearts, then hooked in sets of threes.  Does it get any easier?  Yes.  Just cut out three hearts and glue them to a piece of paper.  Bam!  St. Patrick's day craft done!


Bottom line, it doesn't have to be big.  One small gesture can be enough to make the day exciting.  So don't over think it and don't stress.  Just do it.

Good luck! ;)


Marcia

Saving Money on Food: A Word of Caution aka "When Good Food Goes Bad"

So we all know we should buy In bulk whenever possible, and we should snap up those great deals we come across, and not be afraid to buy 200 boxes of cereal if it's on clearance.  Right?

Yes.  Definitely yes.  Always yes.

But... keep an eye on it.  If you're not eating it like crazy right away (for example, when I bought 100 boxes of my kids' favorite cereal, it was gone in two months), pay attention.  I still say that expiration dates are an imperfect way to decide when your food is too old to eat, but...

But sometimes food, even "non-perishable" food, goes bad.

I have to admit, there's a possibility that it's not just that my food was past date.  Maybe it's that I've trucked some of it coast-to-coast twice in the last two years, in a super hot moving truck.  I don't know.  All I know is that for two things: canned tuna, and boxed pasta, this fall was definitely not good to them.  It started with the pasta.  This was "boil in 3 minutes" pasta, that I'd gotten on sale, plus in-store coupons, and ended up paying 48 cents per 16 oz. box.  Naturally, I bought over a hundred boxes.

I think, in hindsight, if I'd moved the pasta from it's individual (not at all air-tight) cardboard boxes, into some kind of air-tight, lidded, plastic container, it would have lasted longer.  I don't know.  What I do know is that this pasta, which I expected to last for years (like all my other bagged pasta) is so stale and gross we almost can't stand to eat it.  I'm about ready to toss it, which should give you a clue as to just how much we hate it...

The other is canned tuna.  And this one makes me sad.  Canned tuna should last years.  Like ten years.  Or more, if you keep it cool, which I did not.  My moving truck got so hot it melted candles I had packed in boxes.  And "hot" is definitely not the way to go for good food storage practices.

Anyway, when I was unpacking my food storage (actually Marcia and her daughter did most of the unpacking - it's so nice to live kind of near her again, and not just because she helped me unpack!), I noticed that my tuna cans were bulging.  Now, I'm a pretty cheap person, but I'm not stupid.  They all went straight into the trash.

So keep an eye on that food storage.  It's not a super great deal if you end up throwing it away.

Kate

Tip of the Day: Be Your Own Convenience 2

Chips, crackers, cookies, popcorn.

If your kids are anything like mine, an open bag of chips becomes in empty bag of chips in a matter of seconds.  They just can't resist.  So rather than hovering over them and handing out snacks one at a time, I just bag them into snack size baggies ahead of time. All kinds of snack foods can be bagged for later consumption.  When the kids get home from school, they know they get one snack.  They can choose from the snack bucket what they want to eat, and I don't have to listen to fighting about who ate the last handful of crumbs from the bottom of the Doritos bag!

Yes, it costs money for the baggies.  But we reuse them again and again (they aren't dirty, it's just crumbs), and it's a whole lot cheaper than buying individual servings, or going through a bag a day.

Marcia

Be Your Own Convenience

Standing in the checkout line the other day, I saw a big bin of individual cereal packages for sale.  Cereal on the go!  You know, for all those busy people who don't have time to get out their own bowl and pour the cereal themselves, right?  Essentially it's one cup of cereal that costs almost as much as a whole box.  It seems crazy to me, but obviously somebody is buying it or they wouldn't keep selling it.  And the longer these products sit on the shelf the more they start to seem normal to all of us.  And sooner or later a large portion of reasonable minded people (like you and me) are going to see them and start to think we need them too.



Do I need individual servings of cereal?
No.
Would my life be better if I had individually packaged cereal?
I don't think so.
But sometimes my kids need to eat on the go.
True.
And I really hate to see them go to school on an empty stomach.
Yes.
And sometimes the kids just need a snack, right?
Sometimes.
And think about how much cereal we waste when kids pour their own bowls and spill or just eat half and throw the rest away.  Portion control would be great, right?  And it would save money by eliminating waste!
Right.
So my life would be better if I had these individual cereal servings after all.
Yes.  I guess it would.

So rather than wait for convenience food mentality to sink into our subconscious, let's fight back now.  Let's make our own lives more convenient (for free) before the advertisers have  a chance to persuade us.

 Bag your own cereal.

There is a really simple solution.  When you bring home a box of cereal, immediately bag it up into individual serving sizes.  Then whenever someone needs cereal, they just grab a bag.  Cereal stays fresher longer because you don't have an open box sitting on a pantry shelf forever.  It helps with portion control, prevents spills, and makes it easy for kids to grab a snack "on the go".  (Hey!  That sounds familiar!)  The baggies stay clean except for the crumbs, so we reuse them again and again with no waste.  It really is that simple.  It only takes a few minutes of your time (actually I don't do it at all.  My kids do.  As part of our regular chores one of my kids is assigned to make sure the cereal bucket is filled up each week!), and is totally worth it.

Marcia

The Curse of the Halloween Candy!

Every year after Trick-or-Treating, my mom would put all our candy in a giant bowl on top of the fridge to be dished out one at a time at Mom's discretion.  Oh how I loved that bowl with it's promise of candy goodness!  Oh how I hated that bowl sitting up so and high mocking me with it's unavailability!  I cursed my heartless mother for taking my candy, taunting me with its presence, and then dispensing it in miserly portions. I swore in my little toddler heart that when I was a mother I would always let my children keep all their Halloween candy and eat it whenever they wanted.   And then I became a mother....

It seems simple: Kids + Candy = Happiness. 

But life is rarely that easy.  Kids + Candy = (Cranky Kids + Sticky Fingers + Sugar High + Sugar Low + Wrappers Everywhere + Grumpy Mom) x Infinity

Somehow the magic of free treats turns into a nightmare in a matter of days (or hours!) as the candy begins to multiply like Gremlins in water. Your house becomes filled with empty wrappers and half chewed taffies, and you find your children huddled like packs of zombies swaying to chants of I want more candy! I want more candy!

If you are a young family (everyone under six), the Big Bowl approach probably works just fine, since centralized control is the name of the game in parenting small children. If your kids are all big (ten or older), then you also aren't likely to have problems at all. The trouble happens when you have kids spread out over a variety of ages. You can trust some, others you can't. This is why having a big family is tricky. What works for one age group is often a major failure with other ages. So what do you do?

When we started discussing this post, we expected to see two very different approaches to candy management. Kate is the more responsible mom who believes in bedtimes and vitamins. Marcia is the more fun mom who believes in eating ice cream for breakfast. Surprisingly we have almost the same plan of action when it comes to candy. Since 100% of the moms we surveyed (meaning the two of us) endorse this method, we now present it to you as the definitive answer to all your candy woes.

(*Disclaimer: We change our minds and our methods all the time. We probably only agree on this because our kids are exactly the same ages. Neither the authors nor their affiliates endorse taking candy from babies or giving candy to babies.  Candy should be eaten with extreme caution and under adult supervision only. Not recommended for children under the age of three. Do not operate heavy machinery while eating candy or reading this blog.)



Life at Kate's House:
 
First of all, once you turn 12 you no longer get to go trick-or-treating.  I just have a hang up about teenagers, so mine don't go. However, I will still give out candy to the teens who show up at my door (I'm not a total ogre!), but there is a catch.  Literally.  I give candy to teenagers, but I make them stand out on the lawn and we throw it at them. :)

One snag we've had in our no-trick-or-treating-once-you're-12 rule: my oldest, who jumps at every chance to be considered older/separate from her younger siblings, was thrilled to finally be old enough to hand out candy.  My second-born?  He's not.  So we compromised.  He can dress up, and he can walk around with us and the little ones, but he can't walk up to the door, and he can't get any candy (this dubiously drawn line will get slightly murkier in a moment when I talk about how we handle the candy itself).

So, the candy.  I know lots of people will say this is mean, but it works beautifully in my house.  What we do is, upon returning home from trick-or-treating, we dump everyone's candy out in a pile in the middle of the living room floor.  We label a sandwich-size Ziploc baggie for each person, and then take turns choosing a piece of candy out of the pile.  "Everyone grab one piece.  Okay, everyone get another."  This way everyone gets the same shot at the "good candy."  When the bag is full (or when I think they've gotten enough anyway), I take what I want (Snickers), and we put the rest in a huge bag for my husband to take to work.  He takes what he wants (Almond Joy) and gives the rest to whoever fills the candy jar in his office.

Using this system, my newly-turned-12 boy is actually going to end up with just as much candy as everyone else, and is going to walk around on the 31st all dressed up.  So in actuality he's not missing out on anything.  But the perception is that he is.  And in parenting, isn't that what we have to go on sometimes? 

The bags of candy typically stay in the kitchen, where they can come and ask for a piece whenever they want it. My kids eat their candy, a piece or two a day, until around a week after Halloween. By then I'm kind of tired of having them ask all the time and I tell them to hurry up and eat the rest of it (5 pieces).  No sugar high, no drama, everything is, for one moment, "fair".


Life at Marcia's House:

I also don't let anyone over twelve go trick-or-treating. I don't think it's right for teens to be begging for candy (even though I totally did it as a kid!).  My big kids who can't trick-or-treat take turns either staying home and handing out candy, or walking the little kids around the block to trick-or-treat.

When the candy first starts rolling in (it comes in waves: school party, church party, trick-or-treating) we get out a gallon sized baggie for each child. The kids are allowed to keep any toys that they acquire, and they can save their favorite ten pieces of candy in their bags as well. Everything else goes into a giant community pile.

Then we start sorting. There are four main types of candy: Gross, Cheap, Good, and Chocolate.  There is a 50% chocolate tax that is automatically paid to my husband and I.  We take half the chocolate and hide it in our room to be consumed at our leisure.  We put the rest of the chocolate along with the good candies into a bowl. The remaining candy is sorted into bowls for cheap candy and gross candy. We buy one bag of good candy to hand out on Halloween. We mix that bag of good candy into the bowl with the cheap candy.

When trick-or-treaters arrive, we go to the door with two bowls: the cheap/good mix and the gross candy. We hand out the mix of cheap/good candy to little kids, and the teenage trick-or-treaters get the gross candy. This way everyone is happy! I get rid of the gross candy. Teens still get something. And little kids get a mix of good and cheap candy! Win-Win-Win.

When the night is over and we are done acquiring treats, everything left goes into a big pile again. Then all the kids (big and small and Mom and Dad) take turns grabbing five pieces at a time and filling their bags with candy. Everyone gets their favorites. Everyone gets an equal amount. And everything is fair.

The big kids are allowed to keep their candy in their rooms, but it is their responsibility to hide where little fingers won't find it. I keep the younger kids' candy on the top shelf of the pantry where they (theoretically) can't reach it, and they have to ask to get it.  The kids eat their candy 20 or 30 pieces a day for about a week until they get sick or I get tired of all the candy wrappers all over the house, and I make them eat all the rest of it in one day just to get rid of it!

I think the real take away message here is that you should do it Kate's way and only give them a sandwich bag full of candy and not a gallon sized bag!


So what do you do with all that extra candy?

Donate it to a shelter.  Kids who are staying in family shelters probably didn't get to dress up and go trick-or-treating.
 
Donate it to overseas troops. Check out www.halloweencandybuyback.com There's a search box at top right where you can find a participating dentist near you

Google suggests that you use it for crafts?  I don't know, I think my kids would pick it off and eat glue-covered candy.

Save it and put it and put half of it in their stockings for Christmas and the other half in their Easter baskets!



Happy Halloween!

Kate and Marcia



So tell us, what do you do with your Halloween candy?

Home Canned Pears

One of the great blessings of living in Washington is the abundance of free fruit to be had.  Last week my sister stopped by with a box of pears from her pear tree.  They were super ripe and ready to eat.  Even with everyone in my house eating several pears a day, there was no way my family was going to get through the whole box before they went bad.  So that only left one option: Canning.

I've actually never canned pears before.  I've canned lots of other things, but not pears.  Fortunately inexperience never stops me.  In a thirty second conversation with my sister, I learned everything I need to know.
The conversation went something like this:

Me: How do I can pears?
Sister: Peel 'em, cut out the core, dip them in lemon juice, stuff 'em in a jar, fill it with water, add sugar if you want.
Me: How long do I boil them?
Sister: 25 minutes.
Me: Great, thanks.

So there you have it.  Now you can can pears too!

Right?

Or did I go too fast...?

Okay, in case you missed some of the steps, here they are again:

Get some pears.

Get some old jars and rings (rinsed in super hot water), and some new lids.

Get a giant canning pot,

with one of these jar holder things in it.

Peel the pears and cut out all the yucky inner and outer stuff. Slice them whatever size you want, then dip them in lemon juice.

Put them in a jar, fill the jar with water up to a half inch from the top, add a tsp. of sugar if you want (I always want sugar). Then wipe the rim of the jar clean with a paper towel. Put a new lid on it, and loosely screw a ring onto it. Then put in a pot of boiling water for 25 minutes. (This is seriously the only complicated step: you have to figure out how long to boil them at your altitude.  Luckily, here's a handy chart to tell you!)

After 25 minutes, set on the counter to cool. If the jar seals properly, the lid will "pop." The little bubble in the middle of the lid that normally pops up and down will be stuck down, and that's how you will know it is safely preserved.

Good luck!


Marcia

Tip of the Day: Freezing Vegetables

Don't leave your car unlocked at church or someone will likely get into it and fill it with zucchini!

It's a real problem. The gardening season is winding down, but you still have more tomatoes and squash than you know what to do with.  It's exciting during the summer when the first vegitables start growing, but when everything ripens at the same time you eventually get more fresh food than you can handle. So what are you going to do with it?

Give it away.  Sharing is always a good idea.
Can it.  A great idea, but can be difficult and time consuming.
Freeze it. That's what I'm doing this year. It takes almost no time or preparation to freeze your garden's surplus. Most things can just be tossed in a freezer bag, and into the freezer, and that's it! Let's look at a few examples.

Tomatoes
Frozen tomatoes are nearly the equivalent of canned tomatoes. When you freeze your tomateos, the cells break down giving them a mush texture. This texture just happens to be perfect for soups and sauces.  If you have more tomatoes than you can use fresh, wash them, pull off the stems, then store them (whole) in a freezer bag. When you are making spaghetti, just pull out a bag and toss it into the blender. It's like opening a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes (only it's free cause it came from your garden!).  All types of tomatoes work, and you can mix them up in the bag together.

Bell Peppers
I don't like peppers. I only grow them cause they look so cute! Occasionally though we do cook with them. Usually we put them on pizza or in fajitas.  So when my peppers get ripe, I slice them into the shape I know I will want to use them in. Then I toss them in a bag in the freezer. Months later, if I'm making a pizza, I can pull out just a few slices at a time and leave the rest for another day. It's better than buying a fresh one at the store (cause it's free!) and I only use what I need, so there is no waste.



Zuchini
There is only so much zucchini bread you can eat in one month. The good news is, you can store that zucchini in the freezer and have it all year long.  I peel it. Shred it. Then store it in two cup increments, so it's ready to take out at a moments notice for fresh backed zucchini bread.  Another bonus of having shredded zucchini on hand is you can toss a bag of it into any casserole as a way to sneak in a vegetable when the kids aren't looking!


Marcia


P.S.  I hope you are freezing like I am this fall!   ;)     

My Plum Tree

I have a plum tree.  I am very proud of it. In fact, I will admit right up front that my sole motivation in writing this post is to brag about my wonderful little tree.

I planted it in my front yard about four years ago.  I chose to put it out front for two reasons.  First, I didn't want it taking up the kids' play space in the back yard.  Second, I dreamed of a day when this tree would produce more fruit than we could eat, and I wanted it to be out in the front yard where our friends and neighbors could share in its bounty.

But the first year it produced no fruit. :(

The second year it produced one teeny tiny little rock hard plum that was half green and half purple.

The third year it was showing a lot of promise with dozens of green plums starting to grow.  Unfortunately my over-anxious toddler picked ALL the green plums before they had a change to mature in size or color.

This year was different.  We not only had hundreds of green plums earlier this spring, but dozens of them actually survived and ripened into actual real live edible fruit.  Real fruit!

I don't know anything about growing tree fruit.  I don't actually like plums that much, but do you know what I do like?  All natural food.  Fresh food.  Free food.  There really is something magical about eating the food you grew yourself.  We watched that tree for four year without success, but this year we had more plums than our family could eat.  That is a really good feeling.

There is an old proverb that goes something like this:

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.  The second best time is today."

Marcia

Cooking Meat Ahead of Time

This is exactly what it sounds like, and it is the most important thing I do to keep my dinner-making in the 20-25 minute range each night.  Cooking meat is usually the longest part of any dinner preparation, so if you can get it done ahead of time, you'll always be ready for a quick meal in a pinch.

I cook ground beef, at least five pounds, but more often ten pounds, at a time.  Maybe that sounds crazy, but it really takes almost the same amount of time to do as two pounds.  Then I drain the fat off, and let it cool.  If I'm really feeling lazy (did I say lazy?  I'm sure I meant busy...) I just dump it in the crock-pot instead.  Ground beef cooks beautifully in there - just chop it up with a spatula after it's done.

Thanks to Amy for cooking ground beef for me, so I could take a photo!

Chicken?  I crock-pot it, too.  I have a kind-of big crock-pot: I think it's 8 quart?  At any rate, I can fit at least 10 pounds of chicken in it.  I put it in and turn it on in the morning (even starting from frozen!) and it's done by late afternoon.  I might use some of it in dinner that night, but most of it I pull out of the beautiful golden chicken stock (which I also save and freeze), put it into a large bowl with a lid, and refrigerate until the next day.  I used to just chop it up right then, still hot.  But then one day I guess I was in a hurry and didn't have time to chop ten pounds of chicken so I put it in the fridge until the next day and made a wonderful discovery: cold chicken chops SO much more easily (and prettily) than hot chicken.

No matter what kind of meat you're cooking, you can almost always cook a whole lot of it in about the same amount of time as a smaller amount.  Then just divide it into Ziploc bags, and pop it into the freezer to wait for the next time you need to make dinner in a hurry.

Which as I've said before, is always.

Kate