Warm Delights

So, I LOVE chocolate. And I love chocolate cake. But who wants to take the time to bake an entire chocolate cake every time you crave one?  Besides, it's just NOT a good idea to have all that cake sitting around my house. I'm on a see-food diet - I see food and I EAT it.

Anyways, I love Betty Crocker's Warm Delights, but I can't bring myself to pay for them. But occasionally I've found deals to get them for free or for nearly free (less than a quarter) and I indulge.  Did you know that you can make these yourself?  I have tried many microwave cake recipes (cake in a mug, etc.) and frankly, they are NO GOOD. Trust me.

Recently, I came across an alternative to make your own Warm Delights, and they are JUST LIKE THE REAL DEAL, people!!!!  Why didn't I think of this before?

Observe:

1. Take one box of cake mix

2. Measure 1/4 cup into a microwave safe vessel (or reuse an empty Warm Delights pan!)

3. Add two tablespoons of water

4. Mix well with a spoon

5. Lick spoon
5. Microwave for 1 - 1.5 minutes

6. Let sit as long as you can stand it (~15 seconds for me...)

7. Top with some chocolate chips, or fudge or whatever (optional)

8. EAT!!!

9. Relish in the frugalness of it all!
10. You're welcome. :)

Pretzel Makers

Our friend Kali helped us make some delicious homemade pretzels this week. The girls had a great time in the kitchen with me.



It was hard to wait, but it was SO worth it:

Christmas Baking

The girls love to help me bake. I made two versions of Peanut Butter Blossoms last week. Both recipes were good, but different. The first was more crisp and the second more chewy.

C and E did some great teamwork to unwrap all those kisses:

Keeping the Girls Busy

Yesterday I attempted to cook nine recipes for OAMC. I did get eight completed and have 32 chimichangas to make today. Doug's primary duty on these days is to entertain the girls. I found a cute craft for them to make - a photo house card. They all had fun!



After naptime, Doug was pitching in with the cashew chicken (he's the wok master of our house). So, I had to come up with some way for the girls to occupy themselves while we both worked. Voila! A homemade, indoor water table did the trick:

I have arrived?

As some of you know, I've been making our own bread since September. The girls and I really enjoy whole wheat sandwich bread, and I bake about 1-2 loaves a week.

Recently, I heard about a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Being my frugal self, I looked it up at our library. Since they didn't have it, I requested an inter-library loan and they ended up buying a copy for themselves! That's pretty cool, dontcha think? I'll have to try that more often.

Anyways, I got the book and decided to try it out. Doug is a bread-snob and really loves sourdough and artisan breads. The idea is that you make up a mongo batch of dough and keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks. Whenever you want bread, you cut off a hunk, shape it, rest it, and bake it. Simple!

The result was REALLY REALLY REALLY good. Really. Doug said, "you have arrived in breadmaking." I don't know about that, but I'm definately on my way.



p.s. I worked out the cost per loaf, as pictured: $0.43

OAMC - Follow Up

Thanks for the comments and questions on OAMC!

I'll do my best to answer them here.

1) OAMC is doable without a dedicated deep-freeze. Just look at this woman's freezer:

First, you will need to clean out your freezer and purge all old and unnecessary items. You may have to sacrifice your ice cube tray area, depending on the freezer. But, as you can see from the photo, most OAMC meals can be frozen in nice flat gallon-size plastic bags. These stack really well, so you can fit a lot in a small space.

It's important to keep an inventory of what's in the freezer. I recently started doing this, and it has been immensely helpful. As I use each item, I cross it off the list. I update the list on my computer and print out a new one each Sunday.

2) How many meals feed our family for a month? Well, we really aren't too legalistic about this. For an average session, I probably make about 6 recipes and double each one. Depending on the month's schedule (dinner at friends', vacation, church meals) I'll use 3-4 frozen meals a week. Doug always takes leftovers to work, so if he didn't do that, the meals would probably stretch further.

3) Nobody asked this, but it's something VERY important that I forgot to add. One of the FUNDAMENTAL KEYS TO SUCCESS (too much politics) is to have a plan of what you're going to eat on which day. When you forget to pull something out of the freezer to thaw, and dinner-time comes along, you're up a crick without a paddle. That's when we usually ding ourselves by getting Chinese or pizza. With a calendar of meals, I always have one or two things in the fridge, thawing out.

Another way around this is to always make at least one recipe that doesn't require thawing. For example, our chimichangas are put into the oven still frozen. They are good to use when I've forgotten to thaw something, or we've finished a meal sooner than I thought we would.

Hope this helps!

The Once-A-Month-Cooking Post

Here it is - by popular demand - my post on Once-A-Month-Cooking (aka OAMC).

The Definition

Spend one day cooking enough meals to feed your family for a month. You cook double or triple of each recipe and put it in the freezer to be thawed and eaten later on.

For us, we dedicate one day every 5-6 weeks for OAMC. I usually create "the plan" during the week, go shopping Friday night and cook all day Saturday or Sunday. Doug watches the girls while I concentrate on cooking. We have a deep freeze, but you don't need one to do this. See this example here to prove it!

My Motivation

OAMC is really the single most money-saving thing that we do for our grocery budget. Yet, while I was initially attracted to OAMC for frugality, I've found it really saves my sanity as well.

With two small kids, it's hard to cook a homemade meal with little hands constantly pulling at my pants, and the incessant WHINING: "I'm HUN-gry, I want to help, I want Mommy to read a BOOK!" It's so much better to turn on the oven, pop in a pan and play with the girls until the timer dings. Ahhhhh...

My sister, Sharon, also loves OAMC. She and her husband Chaz both work full-time and don't have a lot of time to cook meals when they get home from work each day. OAMC is perfect for them.

Plus, OAMC is good for you, because you are cooking homemade meals and can control the type and quality of ingredients that you use.

"The Plan"

Ok. So how do we do this? First, I come up with a list of recipes that I want to make for the next month. I try to balance these out, so it's not ALL chicken or ALL beef or ALL Italian, etc. I have some tried-and-true recipes that we love (see here on my recipe blog) and I love trying one or two new ones each time. I also take into consideration what's on sale at the grocery and what I have on-hand in the freezer.


I then come up with my shopping list. I use a computer program called, MasterCook, which is great for OAMC. You can select your recipes, set how many of each you want to make (double, triple, etc.) and have it automatically create an ingredients list for you. It's not perfect, but does a decent job of combining ingredients and will even sort them by grocery store location. Faster than I could do, anyways! I print out this list and go through the house to cross-off items that I already have on hand.

Shopping

Pretty self-explanatory. I shop and purchase everything on my list. It never fails to amaze me how little I actually spend for a cart full of ingredients, knowing that it will feed our family for many weeks!

I shop without kids. This is CRUCIAL to saving money, as you can concentrate on finding the best deals (coupons/generic/manager's specials).

The Execution

Most OAMC'ers will tell you that they create a plan of attack, where they first cut all the veggies and then cook all the meat, etc. I pretty much just do one recipe at a time. If we've got 6 lbs of beef to cook, I'll probably cook that all at once and put it in the fridge, but I do the rest one at a time.

After each recipe has been cooked and cooled slightly, I package it up for the freezer. Whenever possible, I like to put the food in a gallon-sized freezer Ziplock bag. (FYI - the generic brand hasn't cut the mustard for me, so I buy Ziplocks in bulk from Sam's Club.) Otherwise, I make casseroles and lasagnas in foil dishes that I wrap in aluminum foil and freeze.

I label each container with the recipe name, date and instructions for cooking. I often quickly print off the "after frozen" instructions from the computer and tape it directly to the container. It's easier to do this than to look up the recipe each time you pull out a meal. Plus, if you decide to give one away to somebody else, it will be clear what to do with it. (Make sure you say whether to thaw or not to thaw.)

If the recipe calls for cheese or some fresh herbs to be sprinkled on after baking, I will store these in smaller freezer bags (or vacuum bags) alongside the meal. Just make sure to label these so they won't get used for something else. For example, a little bag of mozzarella cheese should be labeled, "Jumbo Shells."

For soups and soup-like recipes, I have a special way of getting it into my bags. I first label the freezer bag with a Sharpie, and then put it into a plastic drink pitcher. Then I ladle the soup carefully into the bag, so it doesn't splash over the sealing strips (I'm picky) and cool the whole thing in the fridge. Then just pull it out, seal and store.

Sometimes I use a straw to suck the excess air out of the bags, a cheap vacuum effect.

For Beginners

If you enjoy cooking and think you'd like to give this a try - do it! Maybe start off with 2 or 3 recipes and double each one for a start. I usually only make a single recipe of each new recipe to make sure we like it, anyways.

Resources

Here are a lot of resources that I use to find recipes, and learn more about how others do OAMC:

* Recipezaar OAMC Recipes
* NyeSista's Recipes (my family's recipe sharing blog)
* Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook
* Dream Dinners Cookbook
* Once-A-Month-Cooking - the original handbook for OAMC, written by my friend's aunt!
* Beth's OAMC Page
* Recipezaar OAMC Plan Forum
* Robbyn's Friendly Freezer
* Deb's OAMC Keeper Recipes

How 'bout them apples?

Since our fun trip to the apple orchard, I've been having fun trying out many new recipes for our abundance of apples.

I've made:
Apple Butter,


Apple Crumble,


Apple and Maple Walnut Cobbler,


and Applesauce.


YUM! We still have about 20 lbs of apples left! I think that more apple butter and some other apples desserts are in our future. Also, I read that you can freeze vacuum-packed apple slices! Has anybody ever tried that?

My Foray into Breadmaking

For the last couple weeks, I've been baking my own bread. I've been interested in doing this for a while now, and finally gave it a go. I found a great whole wheat recipe, here, which has been very yummy. C will even eat the crust, since it is very soft and the same color as the bread. It's easy, fun, healthy and frugal!

I got some books from the library and plan to try some other recipes, as well. I'd like to try some homemade English muffins and making my own pita pockets, too!