Cooking for One Is Hard

Cooking for two is hard too.  Most recipes make enough for four, maybe more.  If you are cooking for more, it is pretty easy to double the recipe, but if you are cooking for one or two, you have to half the recipe and fractions are hard.

You can always put the remainder in the plastic container and eat it tomorrow, but then it might get really dull to eat the same thing for two or three days.

Here are a few ideas to help:

1.  Cook 1 cup of rice.  Bring 1 cup water to a boil in a 1 quart pan.  Add 1/2 cup long grain rice (not instant rice).  Put the lid on the pan and reduce the heat to low.  In 15 minutes remove the lid and fluff the rice with a fork. Instant rice is easier and takes less time.  Read the instructions on the package.

Place about 1/2 cup of cooked rice on a plate and add chopped, cooked chicken, and any kind of gravy or sauce you like.  If you heated the chicken and sauce, it's ready to eat.  If not, put it in the microwave for 1 minute.  Any kind of bread or rolls is fine.

This is assembled on the plate, so you can make one or two.

For dessert, have fruit with caramel sauce and cookies.

2.  This gets a little sticky, but it's good.  Remove the meat from leftover chicken wings that you bought at a fast food restaurant.  Add the rest of the rice (if you only used half of it).  Add two tablespoons of water and warm it.  You might need to add a little more barbecue sauce.  Ketchup will work if that's all you have.  Chop any pieces of chicken that are too big.  Stir it gently to maintain the rice grains.

Corn, pork and beans, or a green salad makes it a special event

For dessert, put a square of chocolate on a graham cracker with one large marshmallow and place it under the broiler until the marshmallow begins to brown.  Top with another graham cracker.  Be careful.  It will squish!  (This is called a S'more).

Be sure to store all leftovers in a covered container, and don't leave them too long.  We are dealing with perishable products.

Good Food Is Important to Life

Cheap & Easy: A Cookbook for Girls on the Go

Good food doesn't have to be hard.  You can buy pie crust instead of making it.  You can buy biscuit mix and cake mix and cookie mix.  You don't have to start from scratch.  Lots of people will say that food is always better if it takes you all day over a hot stove, but don't believe it.

Quick and easy counts too.  If you really don't know how to cook, but you want to learn, start with the easy stuff.  Read the recipes on the biscuit mix box. 

If you add milk and sugar to biscuit mix until you have a dough or batter and pour it over sweetened fruit in a pan or Pyrex dish and bake at 350 until it browns on top, you have made a cobbler.  You can make the crust however you like it.  If you use 1 cup of mix, 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup milk, you will make enough for a small cobbler.  Drop it by tablespoons on the fruit.  If you use 2 cups of mix, 1/2 cup sugar and 11/2 cup milk you will have a pourable crust.    Adjust the kind of crust you want to make by how much milk you add to the biscuit mix and sugar.  If you want a real pie crust, buy it.  Surprise everybody.  You cooked it.

As you experiment with these small beginnings, you may find that cinnamon or allspice adds flavors that rival the big time chefs.  And it was easy.  

If you are trying to avoid carbs, you need to cast a hungry eye at vegetables like spinach.  Fresh spinach looks intimidating, but don't fear.  You might want to cut off the stems, but if they are young and tender they won't hurt anything.  Rinse them and drain them for a little while, and let the skillet heat up.  Put 2 tablespoons of butter or olive oil in the skillet until it melts or gets hot.  Reduce the heat to low.  Add the spinach leaves and put a lid on the skillet.  The spinach will wilt and release liquid.  Watch it and stir it until the leaves are tender.  Add salt to taste. 

Toast or whole wheat crackers are good with almost anything.  Add garlic powder or whole roasted garlic for a little kick.  Cheese goes good with this too. 

Get pre-cooked chicken and warm it in the microwave if you are in a hurry or your mother called to say she would meet you at your house.  You don't have to show her the package.  And you did cook some stuff.  She'll be so proud.

Remember Frugality? Use the Leftovers!

Not all leftovers are created equal.  Some things can easily be incorporated into a new meal.  Leftover beans or peas or corn can just be heated and put on the table.  A pork chop or a piece of steak can be chopped into small pieces and added to a salad or soup.  It would make a can of vegetable soup really shine to have meat in it.

Left over pot roast becomes the best ever stew or hash.  Just cut the vegetables and meat up and let them brown slightly in two tablespoons of oil and add the gravy or liquid from the roast.  Or you might add a can of broth or mushroom soup or, maybe you like Alfredo sauce.  Toasted French bread is good with this, especially if you spread some garlic butter on it.  Maybe you like cornbread or crackers.  My advice it to like whatever you happen to have. 

When you are using leftovers, you often come up with new combinations and create new flavor sensations.  Be adventurous!

Surprising Desserts!

It's fun to surprise people.  Surprising them with a great dessert is the Best!  If you like banana pudding, you can make it with cooked or instant pudding, sliced bananas, and vanilla wafers.  Not much cooking to do there.  But it's good and easy.

If you have some left over cake (pound cake that got a little dry) you can substitute the cake for the vanilla wafers.  Cut the cake in chunks and layer it with the sliced bananas and pour the pudding over it. 

Of course, if all you have are strawberries, I guess they'll have to do.  Slice them and sprinkle a little sugar on them and let them sit while you cut up the cake and stir up the pudding.  If you have more than one kind of fruit, throw it in.  Kiwi, Mandarian oranges, cantaloupe, whatever.

If you have a little whipped cream or topping, add that on top.  Put it in a clear glass bowl so all the colors and combinations show.  It looks like a show piece.

If you decide to use canned fruit, be sure to drain it and make syrup out of the juice to soak the cake in.  (Make the syrup by boiling the fruit juice with sugar, 1 cup juice to 3/4 cup sugar until it thickens slightly.) In this case, you might leave out the pudding and just layer the fruit, the syrup-soaked cake, and the whipped cream.  Make two or three layers, whatever your bowl will hold.

Even old fashioned fruit cocktail takes on a sophisticated flavor when it is dress up like this.

You might even soak the cake in rum and even leave out the fruit.  Cut the cake in squares and arrange them on a plate with fruit in the center.  If you use strawberries, you don't have to do anything but rinse and dry.

I've given you some ideas.  Now you try it!

Frugal Doesn't Mean Cheap!

Frugal means getting the most out of your money.  We often think of it as penny-pinching or cheap, but it really means using a product to its best advantage.  So if you buy broccoli, don't discard the tough stems.  Simmer them gently in water and make broccoli cheese soup.  Get two meals instead of one.  You might save one stalk with the pretty green top to chop up in the soup.

There are lots of ways to get more out of what you buy; it's like increasing the gas mileage by driving at the right speed.  You might make the best-ever soup stock by putting all the peels from carrots and onions in a pan with the scraps of meat you trimmed from a steak or roast and simmering it for an hour.  Add whatever you have like a little celery or leftover green beans.  You might add some pepper or bay leaves or cilantro or parsley.  Simmer at least an hour, maybe more.  Then strain it into a jar and put it in the fridg.  If it is going to be a while before you want to make soup, pour the stock into an ice tray.  After it freezes, put the cube in a plastic bag and store it in the freezer.  Be sure to label the bag.  I promise, you will forget what it is for if you don't.

When you are ready to use this example of your frugality, cut your soup meat into bite sized portions, coat with flour, salt, and pepper.  Brown them in a small amount of olive or vegetable oil.  Add the stock.  You might have to add more water.  Add chopped onions, peppers, potatoes, carrots, celery, cabbage, or spinach, or any combination you like.  Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes.  Stir often.
Season to taste.  Serve with croutons made from stale bread, or cornbread, or French bread, or saltine crackers.  Be frugal--use whatever you happen to have.

You will find that you can make a huge variety of soups or casseroles with the same basic stock made from scraps and leftovers.  As you practice this ritual, you may become very adept at combining different or unusual ingredients for a new taste experience.  Sample in small bites before you add it to the whole pot. 

Frugality is the goal!

So You Don't Cook!

I always wondered how it was possible to grow up and not learn how to cook.  Food is fundamental to life.  But some people never learn or care to learn how to cook. 

But now you are grown and married and too broke to go to a restuarant.  Is there something you can do to sustain life and eat well?  Of course!  With the variety of frozen vegetables and meat available you can buy almost anything that only needs to be heated.  Not quite as expensive as eating out, but not cheap either.

There are three factors in life that we must consider in almost every endeavor--cost, simplicity, and excellence.  Sometime the names change, but the principle is the same.  You can achieve two out of three of them, but you can never get all three.  When we talk about food, we want it to be cheap or at least affordable, easy to get, and good to eat. 

If you opt to make your choices on cheap and easy you will have to sacrifice the excellence.  Excellence may include taste, appearance, freshness, and healthfulness.  If you want food to be cheap and easy, you will wind up with potato chips or raw carrots.  If you want the food to be easy and good, you will pay a chef or a high dollar restuarant a lot of money.  If you go for good and cheap, you need to learn to cook.

Cost--Can you prepare food well and cheaply?  I think you can.  I am assuming to keep the price low includes not buying every gadget ever invented, but I would invest in a vegetable peeler.

Buying organic vegetables is not a bad thing, but getting the organic designation is mostly expensive hype.  Nothing that is currently used to kill bugs on edible products is lethal.  Some of the recalls have been related to organic fertilizer, so make sure you want to spend you money that way.

Buying cheaper vegetables probably means they were not shipped from other countries.  It may also mean they are fresher.  Always wash and drain vegetables in clean water before you cook them. 

It is easy to overcook vegetables.  To keep the fresh appearance, drop things like chopped carrots, greens, or sliced turnips into small amount of boiling water, then cover with a lid and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Check them with a fork every 15 minutes until tender.  Add salt, butter, and seasonings to taste during the cooking time. 

Keeping the price down on meat is possible too, but you may be eating the cheap cuts.  Cheap cuts are usually less desirable and less tender.  Chicken legs and thighs are cheaper that breasts, and surprising, more flavorful.  If you want boneless chicken, you have to take the bone out yourself.  One of my daughters refuses to "play in raw chicken," but she has to pay money for a butcher to do what she could easily do herself.

Beef, likewise, is categorized into more and less expensive cuts.  Sirloin steak broils just fine, and it is usually much cheaper than T-bone.  Even top round does fine if it is marianated in a meat tenderizer.  Skirt steak is the traditional cut for fajitas, but because of the demand, skirt steak is often more expensive than bottom round steak, and bottom round makes good fajitas.  Skirt steak is not a really good cut, but it is popular so the price goes up. 

Doing your own cooking is not really the easy way to eat well, even though it is the cheapest.  You have to expand your skills and shop carefully.  You have to plan well and monitor the sales.  On the other hand, you will be a better person for the effort you put into it.  And you can really impress your mother-in-law.

And It Looks Good, Too

There is a long story that tells how we got here.  Maybe it will be revealed as time goes by, but today we're just trying to get started on a new page.  Carol is my daughter.  She doesn't really want to commit to writing this blog, but I do.  So....here we go.

Carol was a cook in a little country cafe for several years, then she was "let go" so she went to work for another little country cafe.  Then her Rheumatoid Arthritis progressed so far that she was no longer able to work at all.  So she went to work for me in my catering business.  She was the meat expert.  She knew how to extimate amounts and cooking times.  She liked to cut steaks and she was also good at all the other things that catering entails.  She couldn't stand very long because her knees had been very serverely affected by the arthritis.

There have been some difficult years, but we are entering a new chapter in our lives now.  I'd like to invite you to check us out and see what you can learn.

The blog will focus on how food makes us feel good.  For the cook, there is joy and blessing in preparing it.  Carol takes that pretty seriously.  When she worked at the cafe, her boss, Littleton Sharp, fussed at her when she wanted to make things look nice on the plate.  "We've got a house full.  Just get it out there--you don't have to make it pretty, too."

But looking pretty--the visual appeal--is important.  Especially when you are expecting people to pay for it.  Even at home it is important for the food to look good.  Especially if there is likely to be leftovers, you want food to still be appealing tomorrow.

Think about how food looks.  Are the colors bright?  Did the bread brown? Does it look good to you?  Your family may think you are a good cook before they even taste the food.