Putting Pinterest to use: dinner this week and other ideas

There was a great story on NPR about Pinterest. Did you know Pinterest could rival Google as the next most useful search engine? While Google can show you web pages that include words about what you are looking for; all us crazy pinners are creating a crowd-sourced mega database of searchable le images. Fascinating how in our spare time, we have taken what started out as a digital bulletin board and turned it into a power house! Surely now you don't feel like Pinterest has been. Waste of time! 

I've been spending some time cleaning out my boards and reorganizing. I decided to start a new board that will only include recipes that I could make with stuff I have on hand. Me? Rationalize time on Pinterest? Nooooo. 

Tonight I was able to use up the last of the broccoli and made cheesy quinoa and broccoli patties. They weren't bad, but they need a little something. Could be something simple like salt, but I suspect a little more creativity with herbs and spices would take these babies up a notch. Any who...combined with a huge tomato from a colleague's garden and bam! Summer supper! 

I also saw an idea recently either somewhere on Pinterest or on thekitchn.com to make a "triage tray" in your fridge. Basically, the idea is to designate space in your fridge for stuff you want to use up before it goes bad. 

 
Such a simple idea might have saved the retried beans I threw in the trash tonight. I used a plastic placemat for my triage tray.  I'm thinking this zucchini noodle with tomatoes and balsamic glaze might be nice for dinner tonight! 

What's going to be on your table tonight? Any fun new recipes in the mix? What's your go-to summer supper?

Grocery shopping 101: August is off to a good start!

Despite not having a car for a whole month, I think we can call July a success in the grocery department. I ended up spending $174.27 for the month, and that included 6 bottles of wine. I shopped at the regular grocery store more than I would have if I could have driven to Aldi, so that also contributed to higher spending. Meh...still not bad. 

August is off to a good start. Loaded up for the next week and splurged a little on dinners for me and my main squeeze to have this weekend. Total bill was $79.39. Here's the breakdown.

I I went a bit over board, but I wanted to have a few extra nice meals. I spent $14 on steaks alone. Not something I would usually do for myself, that's for sure! I also got frozen salmon fillets which will last for quite some time. Looks like I spent a lot for one week if my goal is only $160 a month. Having my main squeeze here for the weekend, and it being the first shopping trip of the month both make for the higher total. It will all even out.

 Here's a little insight into my general strategy for grocery shopping.

• You are what you eat! I am by no means a perfect eater. I keep in mind what is necessary for health when I shop for food. With the occasional exception, try to steer clear of foods that don't contribute nourishment for health. The cuts down on about 80% of the grocery store.
• What can I do with what I already have?  I really try to assess my fridge, freezer and pantry before I head to the store. That way I can use up what I have instead of buying more than I need. Waste not, want not! I make a note of what meals would be possible if I just had 1 or 2 other things. Planing around what I already have helps keep the list to a minimum. I don't worry so much about planning the gaps. I tend to keep a mental tally of some favorite recipes so that I can fill in the menu gaps depending on what’s available when I get to the store.
• The mental list:  My shopping list is pretty stable from week to week. The way my store is arranged, I skip right through the first isle of chips and cookies and snacks to the back for eggs, milk, butter (when I need it), yogurt, and shredded cheese. Then I hit up the produce section. I go a bit crazy in this section! Whatever looks good goes in the cart until I have what I think is enough to get at least 5 generous servings of fruits and vegetables each day.  Then I go look at the meat. If something is on a crazy sale, I might buy it to put in the freezer. Then I grab anything else I might need to complete my mental meal plan. Example: If Italian sausage is on sale, I might go back for an onion and a bell pepper to make this pasta dish I like. Then I grab any staples I might be out of like rice, might grab a couple bags of frozen veggies if I’m out. That’s it. Easy when you skip most of the middle.
• Meal planning: I know a lot of people are big on menu planning, and I am too. If you can check out the flier before going to the store, then plan a few meals around what’s going to be on sale. At Aldi, I feel like not everything ends up in the flier. Sometimes I check my Pinterest boards to get ideas of meals I might like to cook during the week. I also only really plan on cooking 2-3 meals a week. The left-overs are great for nights when I'm too busy or tired to cook and they make for great lunches too. 
• Lunch planning: I generally try to use up leftovers for lunches and then take salads or bento-style lunches made up of little bits of this and that. I don't really buy anything particularly special for lunches. I don't make sandwiches or buy Lean Cuisine type of stuff. Using up whatever is around keeps the waste and cost down!

·     I don’t ALWAYS or NEVER anything, but I do try to keep a good routine for the grocery store. My grocery tips and tricks are what I try to stick by. Of course there is the occasional splurge! Eh hem...steaks.

·       

Feeding the 5000 when you are running on empty

Pretty sure I'm not the one person in the world who is quick to say ,"Sure I can make that happen!" It's easy to read blogs like Pioneer Woman and think that you should be able to run a working ranch, feed a big family, write books, and look cute doing it. She has help. Most of us do not have help. Saying yes too often leave me feeling frazzled. I have got to learn the art of saying no. Until then, I have to cope with the chaos of saying yes.

Yesterday was classic. I volunteered to provide dinner for about 15 people at a board meeting. Not just any meeting. This meeting fell on the birthday of a former state representative, and I was asked to make a special dessert! Typically not a problem. I love to make fun desserts! I love to feed people! Yesterday was a doozy of a day. Woke up at 2:45am. Drove 1.5 hours to the airport to catch the 6am flight back to Maryland. Took the bus from Baltimore to Rockville. Took the shuttle from the metro station to work and made it on time for my 9:30am meeting. Thankfully my 9:30 was bumped to 9:45 which have me time to grab more coffee. Worked the rest of the day...not sure how. Hertz picked me up at 4 in a shiny, red Mustang! I got a rental car, because a month after the wreck I still didn't have my own car. Went to the grocery store and grabbed everything needed for a huge dinner salad. I baked shortcakes while I was still in Indiana, and traveled with them. Grabbed strawberries and whipped topping. I had 15 minutes at home to prepare the salad and cut up the strawberries. Then I drove to the board meeting in a neighboring suburb about 25 min away. Baxter was in the car with me because he hadn't had his evening walk yet. Thankfully everything panned out beautifully! 

Salad!

Strawberry and blueberry shortcake!

15 minutes in the grocery, 15 min of prep (not including baking the shortcakes) and $45 makes dinner for 15! Boom! Made it happen. Not without personal cost. I was so razzed that I couldn't fall asleep. Today I was completely tanked all day. I have got to figure out when to raise the white flag. What's the phrase? Just because you can doesn't mean you should? 

This guy is glad to have me back and get on a more normal schedule! 

I'm glad to be back and getting on a more normal schedule. Today I practiced saying no. When asked if I would be interested to sing in the church choir, I said no! It's a start. 

Healthful eating in the midst of travel madness

Jet setting doesn't bode well for healthful eating and tends to result in food waste. July has been a whirlwind of travel. I was gone the first couple days of the month, home for about 2 weeks, gone for a long weekend, home for 4 days, and I'm about to head out again for a long weekend trip. During this time I did not have a car, so getting up to Aldi for my usual grocery routine wasn't an option. A combination of bike and public transportation have worked out well even to get me to the big chain grocery store around the corner.

I've only recently addressed some of the travel-related food challenges.

• Airport food: I've been using the airport as an excuse to eat Chipotle. My mom and I used to go to Chipotle almost every Tuesday. Chipotle brings back happy memories and it tastes so good! This last trip I had YoBerry. It's an excuse to get a treat, but usually it's a treat I don't really need.

•  TSA: As it turns out, a lot of food can get through TSA screening. I'm trying to be better about packing a meal with me to eat in the airport. Sandwiches, fruit, salads with dressing in jars less than 3 oz all get through TSA. Ice packs get through so long as they are frozen solid. Gel packs, and melted ice do not. I suppose ice in  a zip lock bag could just be thrown away and your food will stay cool enough to get through security and eat it on the other side. 

 

•  Nothing to eat for lunch on "travel Mondays." I go strait from the airport to work and might have a bit of fruit with me.It only just occurred to me after a year of this travel routine that I could leave something in the freezer on Thursday and it would be waiting for me on Monday. So far I'm just leaving frozen burritos that I made a while back.

 

• Food waste: Part of my food waste problem was solved when I started packing meals to eat in the airport. I'm usually only gone for 4 days at a time, so a lot of foods won't go bad.  The hardest part might be the grocery shopping for 3-4 days rather than a whole week in between trips. Here's my loot from the other night. Just enough for 3 days. Cost was $19.57. Way cheaper than eating out for 3 days! 

Your Paleo, gluten free, and vegan junk food is still junk food

News flash! If you take an organic potato, slice it paper thin, fry it in oil, and sprinkle it with sea salt....it's still a potato chip. If you grind up organic corn into meal, add some extra grains, and add some sweet potato...it's still a tortilla chip! It may have a few more nutrients or a few less additives, but that doesn't turn it into a healthy food.

Let me take a step back and just admit that I ate a little bag of "Simply Sweeet Potato Corn Tortilla Chips." My point is not to say NEVER eat tortilla chips. My point is that just because the label says stuff like gluten free, non-GMO, organic or whole grain doesn't make it healthy or good for you.

Here's a great example I found on the ever popular PopSugar blog. Not suggesting you should go to this blog for all your health information, but this article certainly makes the point. Fittingly Mad: Multi-grain vs. Restaurant Style Tostitos. Here's a picture of the Nutrition Fact Panels she used in the comparison. For the same serving size, you do get 1 extra gram of fiber in the multigrain, but at the expense of an extra gram of sugar, 10 extra calories, and 15 mg of sodium. If you are going to eat chips and salsa it probably doesn't matter which one you choose. Just don't be fooled into thinking you are eating healthier. You are still eating chips and salsa.

Here's a fun one: Earth Balance Vegan Cheddar Flavor Squares. They are "Free from dairy, trans fat and GMO’s, these plant-based cheddary flavored crackers are made with the finest finger-licking ingredients we could find." Here are some of the finger-licking good ingredients: maltodextrin, yeast extract, gum acacia, natural flavor, palm oil, sunflower lecithin, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate, ammonium bicarbonate, sugar, paprika oleoresin color, yeas extact, annatto extract, lactic acid, dehydrated toasted onion, and garlic powder.

I'm glad there's a yummy option for those who follow a vegan diet, but I just saw someone tweet the other day something about healthy snacks and had a pictures of these crackers. Vegan yes...tastey yes...healthy maybe not so much.

Just for comparison, here is the ingredient list for Cheese-It crackers. Almost the same except for the actual cheese part. More calories and fat for fewer crackers, but I would still argue that neither is a healthy option. I happen to really like Cheese-Its. Nothing in particular against cheese crackers. Just pointing out that the Vagan option isn't really a healthy option either.

You could do this comparison for so many foods. Paleo brownies are still brownies, and I'm pretty sure brownies were not invented in paleolithic times. Just saying.You can make your own ranch dressing mix from scratch and skip the preservatives, but if you really want to make a health impact shouldn't you just skip the ranch dressing? Between Pinterest and Twitter, it's pretty clear that marketers have suckered so many people into thinking they are making a healthy or at least healthier choice. It's a bit sad. I'm still going to have some chips now and again, but let's just take a minute to remind ourselves that junk food is junk food and should be limited. Don't justify it just because it's got chia seeds in it or has a earthy looking label. Think twice, enjoy junk every now and again, but for the love of pete...remember that you aren't helping your body out by eating tortilla chips. Doesn't matter if they are wholegrain, have chia seeds, are gluten free, or non-gmo. Eat some fruit if you really want a healthy snack that will do your body some good.

Making lunch out of nothing

I'm generally good about packing lunches the night before. Mornings are not my forte. I can make a world of excuses for just about anything in the morning. That's probably why I end up panicked most mornings when I realize I've hit snooze 12 times.  A real common excuse is: There is nothing to pack for lunch. That's the very lazy person inside of me talking! Sometimes I have to force myself to make a lot of lunches out of "nothing." Here are some examples from recent groggy mornings.

1. The no lettuce salad is a great way to use up random bits of vegetables. Example: 1/2 a cucumber, 1 yellow pepper, 2 roma tomatoes, 1/3 can of chick peas, some dill salad dressing mix and a drizzle of olive oil.  Who says you need lettuce to make a salad?

2. The laziest lunch was a container of Greek yogurt, some trail mix, and  a couple pieces of fruit.

3. Wait, this might be even lazier. I packed an unopened bag of baby carrots, the entire container of hummus, and a container of Greek yogurt. I was too lazy to take the hummus out of my lunch box, so I ended up eating way too many baby carrots and some yogurt.

Here are a few pictures of packed lunches that aren't complicated, but do represent my more usual lunch routine.

 

Brie, crackers, plum, blueberries, yogurt, nuts. 

Chicken and rice, green beans, cherries. 

 Strawberries, brie, fig jam, crackers.

 Blueberries, pineapple, brie, fig jam, crackers, yogurt, nuts.

I guess in the end, my goal is to limit buying special lunch foods. I keep bread in the fridge for the emergency PB&J, but I don't buy stuff to make sandwiches every day. I try to find ways to integrate leftovers as much as possible. Buying brie cheese and crackers was a bit of a splurge for easy, fun lunches during this stent of no grocery shopping. I suppose it just depends what's going on in my week. I've really enjoyed getting creative with containers. More on that for another post!

Gardening: Holding on to a little sliver of hope

 Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

And there you have my gardening motto. I should probably take a gardening 101 class. I'm convinced that the reason my last garden worked at all was because of Rebecca, John and Emily. We were quite the team! I'm not sure what the cure is, but I still don't have a green thumb. My house plants are doing really well thanks to the sunny window they live in front of. However, the garden is down the road a mile or so and just gets neglected. 


My neighbor friend had the great idea to get a community garden plot. We were both totally into the idea! I want to have an awesome garden, but the time factor isn't working out for either of us. We both travel way too much to make this happen gracefully. We get way too excited when it rains and we don't have to go out there and water. Some how, by the grace of God, the garden is still alive. Mostly alive with weeds, but it is alive. I didn't take any pictures of the disaster it was when I got there tonight, but here are the meager signs of life! We are going to get some veggies out of this darn thing. Just needs a little TLC. Here are a few highlights from tonight.

This is the general state of affairs. I like to look at that and think there's hope! At least since it's monsoon season in the DC metro area, the weeds were fairly easy to pull. There are at least 3, half rows of lettuce. (We planted about 6 whole rows) The red leaf lettuce is doing the best. Isn't it gorgeous? I love how pretty vegetables are! Our squash plant didn't get squashed! Actually, the squash is doing remarkably well. I think there are 3 or 4 cucumbers growing near the fence.And who knows, maybe the beets and carrots will decide to surprise us.

Some marigolds are popping up in the midst of the weeds! This picture really shows the weeds. Ugh. Now I look at that picture and see all the weeds I didn't pull. Do you like our classy, orange construction fence? We were too cheap to pay for the green garden fence. It's the same thing though. Just really bright orange. Tomorrow maybe I'll go back and weed some more. I wish my apartment complex would just let me set up a container garden on the roof of the parking garage. No one parks up there anyway! There are no dear up there, no rabbits, no gophers, no snakes! It would be a great place to garden! I wonder if my land lord will read this.

Stocking up: 1 grocery run for 2 weeks of eats

Getting in an auto accident is no fun. No fun at all. Thankfully I'm mostly ok. I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who has experienced whip-lash! The whole situation is a major inconvenience. It's a pain in the neck...literally and figuratively. I won't get my car back for another couple of weeks. Jetta Jr is in critical care for the time being, and I have decided to rely on my bike as my primary mode of transportation. Everything I really need is within about a 3 mile radius, so it's not that big of a deal and I should have been riding my bike a lot more anyway. Aldi is not in that 3 mile radius and happens to be my best friend when it comes to grocery shopping. Sticking to an average of $160 a month for groceries isn't going to happen if I start shopping at the regular grocery store. At least I don't think it would be easy. I've grown accustomed to a weekly cart full of fruits and vegetables from Aldi. I stocked up on groceries while I had the rental car in hopes of making it two weeks on one grocery trip. I got gorgeous peaches and blackberries at the farmers' market over the weekend. Oh summer, how I love summer!

Already had to cross blackberries of the list! Oops!

My goal is to share what I have on hand for groceries each Monday. Usually I will include prices since a lot of people have been asking how I keep the grocery bill low, but I threw away the receipt so no prices this week. My bank statement indicates I spent $68 this trip. I will include what I intend to make for the week. Hoping this evolves in a way that's useful to me for developing some kind of pantry/fridge inventory system, and useful to anyone trying to get ideas for healthy eating for just one or two people. For now it might be a bit rugged. Taking a pictures of my hand-written scribbles is rugged for sure. Time will tell how this will pan out.

I love these $1 menu notebooks from Michael's

Looks like this week I have everything to have a variety of nice summery salads, lemongrass pork stir-fry, some kind of bean salad with lots of chopped veggies, a frittata filled with veggies, and a whole lot of fruit. I'll be heading to Beantown for a long weekend, so I'll be focusing on keeping fresh produce from getting wasted. 

Follow me on Twitter @tusarebecca or on Instagram (TusaRebecca) to see how my meals work out this week!

Weekend of Food

The final presentation.

This weekend was a weekend of food. Not just ok food...great food! I made Peach-Whiskey BBQ chicken. I think it's a recipe P-Dub will have in her next cookbook. I used fancier peach preserves, and fancier whiskey. It was so good. I love cooking. Love it! I wish I had the time to cook 2 hour meals every night!

I served the chicken with mashed potatoes (as suggested) and grilled zucchini/yellow squash. I used a cheese slicer thing to get the long ribbons. The guys seemed to think that was pretty special. Did I mention that my audience was all guys? Cooking for guys in nice, because if they're hungry enough they will eat just about anything. On the other hand, they get picky about "girl" food. There was nothing girly about this meal, that's fo sho.

After dinner, I was surprised with birthday cake from Nick and Sam's. Is that beautiful or what?

Hello yummy goodness!

This is what I learned from the whole dinner (it's almost budget related!)
1. Chicken breasts are so 1990's. Chicken quarters are cheap, delicious, and look really nice for serving. I've never had anyone complain about eating thighs and legs.
2. You only need about 2 good sized red potatoes per person when making mashed potatoes. I estimated 3, plus a few extra for good measure. We will be eating potatoes for a few days. Oops!
3. If you have something in the oven for an hour, you should do dishes while you wait. The kitchen was a complete disaster by the end of the night!

Just wanted to make you drool a little more!

Now on a completely different topic. That snooze app I blogged about...I had to delete it! It went off the next morning, I had to listen to the obnoxious beep while I logged into my account. Then, I didn't get an option to turn off the snooze, so it went off again at which point I just turned off my phone. I've been told that it's in a serious beta phase and that a new version will be coming out soon. I'll re-install when the new app comes out and see how it is. I love the concept!