Anywhoo, yesterday I defrosted three packages of chicken legs with the intention of making this. Obviously, based on that sentence I didn’t do it. So I made it today. Let me preface, we’re not a strict paleo-eating household, but I can get behind the diet in theory. I <3 bread. And butter. And heavy whipping cream in my coffee. So full-on paleo is not going to happen.

So I set this up around 3 PM. I changed the recipe a bit. I left out the tomato paste. I used the greens from some leeks I chopped months ago and froze (and not enough). I used more chicken stock. The recipe in the iPad app did not call for white wine like the one on the webpage does.I used a little more fish sauce than it called for. I layered my chicken legs and turned on the crockpot and walked out the door.

But wait. We walked in the door around 6:45 and it smelled delicious. At seven I pulled the lid and it smelled better. I drained & removed the chicken to a container (less clean up as I knew I’d have leftovers) and put the leeks and broth and garlic into a pan and took my immersion blender to it. I boiled it a little more to thicken it a touch. I gave each of my kids two chicken legs, about 1/4 cup of the gravy and tossed a bowl of strawberries on the table. Dinner was devoured.

My oldest is making dessert smoothies now and looking for spinach to toss in there with it. I <3 my kids.

Upfront – I totally get a kick back if you register from this link:
http://emeals.com/amember/go.php?r=292582&i=l0

I do not get a kick back if you register from this link: http://emeals.com

So while this isn’t a sponsored post, I do get a kick back if you sign up using my link. But I use their menus more often than I don’t. So there you go.

That out of the way, I love this site! Yah, I can meal plan my damn self for free. Except it costs me more than I pay in time, so for weeks I haven’t planned or days I don’t want what I’ve planned, it’s fab!

I subscribe to the Whole Foods plan, but you can obviously shop anywhere. I just like the meals better on that one. They try to tie the plans into that weeks sales too, if you pick a store (like Publix, or Whole Foods, or WalMart or Aldi, theres more too!). I also get the Clean Eating plan, which doesn’t make my kids happy, but I enjoy it, so it gives me lunch ideas. It also has a complete break down of how much your shopping trip should cost you. It averages about 150$ a trip, but I shop every other week and don’t shop strictly to this menu and spend about 400 – 500$ a trip for seven or eight people.

You can get sample plans here: http://emeals.com/meal-plans

I got this as a Groupon a few months ago, so I got a year really cheap. They recently sent out an email to extend my subscription by a year at half off. Now, I’ve been printing out my PDFs (and saving them too of course) and sticking them in a folder in my kitchen, so by the time my year is up I’ll have 52 solid plans. I didn’t need another year. What I did do was email and ask if I could get the same renewal rate but a concurrent subscription to another menu and they hooked me up within an hour. So now I get the clean eating menu as well. There is also a “freebie” every week – this week it’s a Cinco de Mayo plan. They had one for St. Patricks too (IIRC it was a crock pot recipe and sides), and one week it was a recipe for cake pops, and another it was a lemon cake. You just have to remember to log in to get the freebie – but they email the PDF to you every week so you don’t have to remember to log in to get your menu.

These are super easy things my 11 y/o can make too – easy to follow directions, includes a side. It’s perfect for us. They have a Mother’s Day menu this week that I’m going to give him so I don’t see the same toast and yogurt mix I usually get (Not that I am knocking toast and yogurt, and I love love love he brings me breakfast in bed multiple times a year, but yogurt is hard for me to face at 7 in the morning)

Like I said, I do get a kick back if you sign up – and if that makes you uncomfortable and you still want to sign up, feel free to go directly to http://emeals.com – but I bet you can put together a pretty comprehensive set of recipes just from the free samples!

As I said, I was using another service (also a Groupon steal!) but I really prefer this one. Do we eat all the recipes? Nope. But after three weeks (that’s 21 plans!) I had a pretty good plan of attack and can put together two weeks at a time easily. Now that I’ve had it for a few months it’s even easier.

There are free sites to do this too, and I use Paprika as a recipe manager (that is a whole other post! Maybe later!) and can do it through that, but sometimes I just don’t have time or get overwhelmed looking through so many recipes. This just limits my options and makes life way easier for me.

But no. While I’ve been rushing about from activity to activity, thriving on iced coffee (both bought and home made) and otherwise forgetting about anything outside of my tiny part of it, the world has gone on! It tends to do that you know. Since 8 Feb we’ve had more dance performances and competitions, signed up for TaekwonDo, started a new book series (Kingdom Keepers – you should read them!), applied to the local charter school (and at least once of us is hoping D gets in!), gone to dentist appointments, started tutoring, and about a million other small, insignificant things that add up to all my time.

On  the bright side of things, I am still obsessing over recipes and pinterest.

Speaking of food, you should absolutely make this:

Sausage & Zucchini Arrabiata. It was originally sausage & eggplant, but I had zucchini is my fridge the night we had this. Cook pasta according to directions and set aside. Take three (or four, or five) sweet (or hot, your choice!) sausages out of their casings and cook until not quite pink and crumbly. Add zucchini (I used 3 or 4, chopped), onion (~1/2 C chopped), garlic (as much as you want), and salt (I omitted, but I always do!) and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add about three pounds of chopped tomatoes (I used a mix of roma and beefsteak), 1/4C chopped fresh basil and 2T chopped fresh oregano and cook until tomatoes break down. Yum! Serve over pasta, or mix it, or add some parmesan (or sardines!) or whatever!

Last year I used the Listography planner and it was a hit. This year I tried to use a plain old Mead school planner and it’s a complete bust. I don’t know what the appeal is about Listography, but I suspect I am on my way to purchase a 2012 version. (I am actually trying another option this week, but Listography is on my mind… I <3 lists – they are scattered all over my home.)

This month I am cheating and using Meals by the Week, which I do not get a kick back from, sadly, and I love it! I don’t love all the meals, but I do love that I can adjust it to feed 8 without trying to convert my measurements *while* I am cooking. (I regularly feed anywhere from six to eight) I love that it gives me my shopping list all together without it taking me an hour to do it by hand.Last week I brought my iPad to Publix with me and made it through the store in under an hour. I should have enough on hand in the house to prepare next weeks menu without needing another trip out. Exciting times people!

There are some other excellent places around the web to get a free monthly  menu plan. Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler puts together an amazing plan every month that includes breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. She even offers it to download, for free, in both editable word doc and pdf format. It even links to recipes she’s posted in her blog. Genius.

I’ve got a million recipes. I’ve got recipes I’ve cut out of magazines. I’ve got too many cookbooks to fit on my cookbook-only six foot bookshelf. I’ve got a nifty little program called Paprika that is on my desktop and on my iPad and it syncs and it’s got a calendar and shopping list too. I’m systematically adding all of the best-loved things I make. Meal planning, at it’s most basic, means I have everything I need in my pantry, fridge and freezer and everyone knows what to expect. I often change around nights, and some nights I order in just because, but for the most part it’s a predictable plan that keeps us from eating the same thing day in and day out.

So yah, the divine plum-vanilla preserves. I can’t remember where I got the recipe from, but hey, what recipe is original any more?
Plum-Vanilla Preserves
Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds firm-ripe plums, cut into 1-inch pieces (with skin) – to be honest, they can be a little mushy
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise and halved crosswise
• 4 small cinnamon sticks
• 1 lemon
• 1 1/2 pounds firm-ripe plumcots (pluots, dinosaur eggs) or apricots, cut into 1-inch pieces (with skin) – again, can be a little mushy

Instructions

1. Put the plums, sugar, vanilla beans and cinnamon in a large wide saucepan. Squeeze the lemon juice through a strainer into the pan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture boils, about ten minutes.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until a candy or deep-fry thermometer registers 220F, about 30 minutes, (To be sure that the mixture has reached the gel point, spoon some onto a chilled plate and put in the freezer until cool. The liquid should set; if not, continue to cook and retest after a few more minutes.) Remove the pan from the heat and let cool 30 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, sterilize four 8-ounce canning jars and lids
4. Return the plum mixture to medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring, then add the plumcots. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the plumcots are tender, about 5 minutes. Discard the cinnamon sticks.
5. Fill the jars with the plum mixture, leaving 1/2 inch headspace, then seal and process

Variations
I like to scrap the vanilla beans in between step 1 and 2, stirring the seeds well into the mix as well as returning the actual bean pieces. Discard the large beans pieces before canning.

Step 4 has you discarding the cinnamon sticks – while I am not a cinnamon fan, leaving a stick in the jar adds to the taste.

Let’s get this party started!

Alex’s mom, Connie Williamson, says she tries to give her son healthy food but doesn’t always succeed.

“When he gets up on his own, he’ll go find what he wants,” she says. “He’ll get a hot dog bun, or get a piece of bread. He’ll get an ice pop or something.”

And that’s exactly what he did early one morning, before his family headed out to the local food pantry. Alex ate a blue ice pop for breakfast.

How about starting by not purchasing ice pops? Then teach your kid how to make a more nutritious breakfast. Eggs are less than 2$ per dozen, and I pay around 5$ for 2.5 dozen. My nine year old can make scrambled eggs. On the stove. This is a new development. Before he was allowed to use the stove he microwaved them. Even subsidized housing tends to come with a microwave.

Connie Williamson says it’s not easy on a tight budget. She spends hours driving around each month looking for deals. She has to stretch $600 in food stamps for herself, her husband, Alex and two teenage girls.

“You can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they’re more expensive,” she says. “You can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week’s time, easy.”

I buy tubes 72/28 ground beef. The fat cooks off anyway, and it’s cheaper than its 90/10 counterpart. When I make hamburgers with it, the fat helps it stay together so I am not adding even more filler, like egg. Same with meatloaf. I buy tougher cuts like london broil and use a crock pot to slow cook them all day long until they are all but falling apart. I buy whole tenderloins and cut my own filet mignon, usually at 4$ a pound no less!I stock up on chicken breast when it’s down to 1.25$ a pound. I’ve bought chicken and meat by the case before in order to save a buck or twenty. Just repackage it and freeze it.

I am lucky that I am able to get organic, local produce every week. I spend 75$ and get around 50 pounds of food. Not a bad price and always delicious. Half your food budget should be on fresh produce, IMO.

But when Alex was thirsty after a walk, his mother gave him a plastic water bottle filled with orange soda.

Elaine Livas, who runs Project SHARE, the local food pantry, says she sees it all time.

“A gallon of milk is $3-something. A bottle of orange soda is 89 cents,” she says. “Do the math.”

Livas says low-income families might know milk is better for their kids, but when it comes to filling a hungry stomach, a cheaper high-calorie option can look pretty good.

I think milk is actually less per ounce than most soda. I could be wrong. I know for sure water is less. Your kids don’t like water? Neither do it. Buy some lemons, squeeze em up! Make some lemon-water (not sugar laden lemonade, just flavour your H2O with a spritz or two) and serve it up!

I only buy 100% not from concentrate juices for my kids. And I water them down. And I stock the fuck up when they are buy one get one.

via Eating Nutritiously A Struggle When Money Is Scarce : NPR.

There is more. More about cooking, and buying high-calorie processed foods and some other stuff. And yes, people are going to be fat and not eat well if they buy high calorie processed foods. Which are cheap. But it is still cheaper to buy fresh (or flash frozen) fruits and veggies and make your own than buying premade crap in a box.

The bottom line here is, we need to teach people how to shop and how to cook, not throw money at them and expect them to know what to do with it. What’s the old adage, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Same idea. I took a 5$ london broil tonight (a tough piece of meat, and usually pretty cheap), two cans of potatoes, a bag of carrots and a box of beef broth and tossed it in a crock pot for six hours. It was delicious. It cost me, at most, 12$ and there was enough there for all eight of us, so call it $1.50 per serving. If we were a family of four there would be leftovers for lunch, dinner or to turn into stew. As it is there is broth left and I think I might make a stew with it as I have another london broil in the freezer.

I said I came down and there were no tortillas, so I made some.

He said, see?

Hm, he might be onto something. Then again, I am not the one standing over the stove cooking the tortillas, so who’s the crazy one now?

Might be me. My tortillas are more like a mix between mazto and pita. O_o

On the flip side, I can use my amazing commercial grade blender at home and make my own fruitilicious smoothie. I can also moan and groan about the time it takes to prep the food, the fact that the husband and I don’t really agree on what makes a good smoothie and the clean up after. Well, if I’m lucky clean up involves adding water to the pitcher and giving it a spin for thirty second and dumping it out and letting it dry.

I just made myself a coconut (Fish hates coconut), banana, mango (he hates mango), blueberry, probiotic (he’s neutral on this), supergreenfood (oh my god don’t let hum so much as see the SGF container!) smoothie. I think it’s delish. Dorian said it was good. Mal & Esh both made icky faces. Fish won’t look at it, let alone try it. His loss!

His smoothies involve vanilla frozen yogurt and other things I don’t consider breakfast smoothie goods. Probably my loss.

Our main tried and true smoothie recipes call for some mix of milk, blue/purple juice (blueberry juice, grape juice, pomegranate juice, etc..), Greek yogurt, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, mango, peaches and/or bananas. Maybe a squirt or two of honey or agave to sweeten it up if it’s a “dry” smoothie.

For a good while we were making our own every morning, and since the kids recently went on a smoothie kick my blender has been getting a workout again. I’m all about it.

Send me your awesome smoothie recipes!

My husband turned 40 yesterday and I have all intentions of making him live forever.

That said, I don’t skimp on ingredients. If it calls for butter, I use butter. Heavy whipping cream is also a staple in my fridge. Sugar, bacon, mayo, you name it. I haven’t tackled lard yet, but I hear it’s actually healthier to cook with than, say, Crisco, which is very processed and doesn’t really digest well. My eggs in the morning? They include the yolk and lots of unsalted butter and fried whole wheat bread.Why no, no we aren’t all five hundred pounds. In fact, most of the people in the house are exactly the weight they should be, and those who aren’t, well… we’re [getting] old and putting on that middle-age pudge. I’m working on it.

I made the best potato salad ever yesterday. It’s a no-mayo variety, although it uses Dijon mustard and Feta, so it’s not exactly good either. (recipe) I also made Nigella Lawson’s Fairy Cakes. Each dozen cupcakes has a stick of butter and 7 Tablespoons of sugar, but they are oh so very good and as a five times a year treat (February, July, August, September & November), oh so very worth it.I’ve also started using a cream cheese icing instead of royal icing. I think the hint of lime in the icing really sets off the cupcakes.

So, food! I splurge on organics. I splurge on natural ingredients (you know, the kind I can pronounce and identify!). I splurge and splurge and splurge till I can’t splurge anymore, because I have reached the end of the food budget.

Where has this gotten me? I have a family who eats better at home than in a restaurant. I have children who appreciate the value of good, healthy food over fast food. That’s not to say they don’t like greasy fast food, but they understand why it’s a sometimes food and not an all the time food. I have a gastronomically adventurous family. Even Malachai, who is averse to many foods will usually at least try it once.

That’s not to say my weekly menu is always diverse. We have homemade mac & cheese at least once a week. Vegetarian chili usually graces my menu once every week or two. Pot pie is a staple. Sausage & peppers. A couple of weeks ago we had jambalaya a couple of times. Cube steak in gravy was a hit. I have the same 20 or 30 dishes that are tried & true, but I try and fit a new one in once a week, or a new twist on an old favourite. I use as many different colours as possible in my cooking. Every shade brings new nutrients to the table, and it keeps you wanting to come back! Who wants a plate of dull white and brown (like meat & potatoes) all the time?

So cook well, cook often and cook diversely. Your family, your stomach and your waistline will thank you.