Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for the ‘Food Stuff’ Category

My husband had a birthday recently and a request for a specific cake. He’s not really much of a cake person and would have probably preferred pie but this is what he said.

He wanted a yellow cake with strawberry frosting. Not fakey strawberry frosting and not a cake mix (which I can’t use anyway) but real strawberry flavor frosting.

Not really finding what I wanted online or in my newer cookbooks I turned to my vintage cookbook for strawberry frosting and found a very simple worthy recipe.

For the cake I turned to America’s Test Kitchen cookbook for a good recipe that had been perfected. The cake was called simply a butter cake but since that’s what yellow cake is, with the complete egg (instead of only egg whites), I went with it.

Picture and recipe are below. Since the frosting recipe was kind of vague about how many strawberries I might have used a bit too man as the frosting didn’t stand in stiff peaks like I like. It’s still very yummy though and was deemed a success!

Strawberry Frosting and Yellow Cake

Strawberry Frosting

1/2 package of frozen strawberries

1/2 cup (or one stick) butter

1 pound powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

I  mixed the strawberries and butter in the mixer and then add the powdered sugar half a box at a time. Drizzled in the vanilla last and whipped it up with my wire beater attachment on high until I thought it looked good. It was enough to frost a 2 layer 9 inch cake.  I left the sides free so it wasn’t overly sweet.

I’ve had so much going on I’ve almost been too busy to blog (see previous post). In addition to preparing to start the homeschool year, and all the foods I’ve been preparing for the freezer we did our first canning project this week. My husband and I. He really wanted in on this. We opted for apple sauce. We wanted a fruit.  A fruit product we already eat. And something easy. It was painless really. We canned in really small jars. We should have used 1/2 quarts but oh well. Next we ‘say’ we’re going to try apple butter and then some pear sauce.

I’m also giving ginger syrup a try. I’ve been wanting to make some ginger molasses cookies and I found this recipe on King Arthur’s website. I remember having seen Ming Tsai make some very easy ginger syrup with bonus ginger candy (if you’ve ever been pregnant or just nauseous ginger candy can be a lifesaver) on A Moveable Feast (cooking video with a few famous chefs) so I  found his recipe and it’s simmering now. Wanna  join me?

Soft Ginger Molasses Cookies

Ginger Syrup Recipe

Ginger Syrup video

Now I’m off to help my mother shampoo her carpets.

Toodles!

So just in case you think I’ve been letting the blog go stale on purpose…

Do you switch up your meal plans during the warmer summer weather?

We sure do.

Here are some of our favorite summertime family meals.

Ground Turkey and Chicken burgers: We have various ways of serving them up. Buffalo Ground Chicken Burgers, Greek Turkey Burgers, Teriyaki Turkey burgers to name a few. Our family recipes are adapted from those found in the Taste of Home Light & Easy Magazine.

Summer Dinner Salad: These are great with so many fresh veggies in season. Mixes of the following…lettuce, boiled eggs, cooked potatoes, olives (sometimes), tomatoes, avocado, various cheeses, beans (sometimes), cooked chicken or turkey, and dressing. Don’t forget pasta and potato salads too.

Wraps: Well we call them tortillas but I guess since they rarely carry the traditional ingredients we’ll have to go with the name “wraps”. We really like them with cooked chicken, sauteed with onions and peppers. Then just add lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes.

What are your favorite summertime dinner dishes?

Betty Crocker has a whole section on their website to entice you to try tasty new dishes this summer. Betty Crocker Red Hot Summer Trends

So I have a new freezer and I’ve been spending some time hugging getting to know it. I’m a little shocked that after emptying the above the refrigerator freezer into it that it is more than half full already. I think that’s pretty telling of how packed my above the refrigerator freezer was.

So here are some great tips and resources I found that might help you too.

Organization

I knew that although the freezer came with two hanging baskets the real job is organized below that. The stuff at the bottom. After reading around I discovered that those plastic crates you find in office supply stores can work pretty well. I have an 8.8 cu ft freezer and was able to fit two of these in there. I designated one of those for raw meats and the other for prepared meals. I will admit that I have a tiny bit of frost on the sides of my freezer and when I pulled up one of the crates it grated against that little bit of ice and ssshhhhiiiivvvveeerrrrrr it was like nails on a blackboard. I can still ‘hear’ it now… ssshhhhiiiivvvveeerrrrrr

I also have smaller baskets that I’m using for butter, veggies, fruits, and my specialty flours (buckwheat, barley, graham, teff) . I have room for a few more baskets and I know I’m still getting accustomed to the whole thing.

Filling it Up

My goal for the freezer is preparing those meals that will help save time in the future and storing good buys and excess from the garden.

For great tips on preserving your foods from all sorts of sources I found this site Pick Your Own it’s about pick your own farms, how to can, freeze, dry and more.

For ideas on what kinds of meals to put away I have quite a few resources, mostly books. There is this nice article to give you an idea of what you can put away.

Then these are the books I’m using for recipes.

Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month: I’m like the way this books is organized. By mini sessions by meat. For example I’m eyeing the ground turkey mini session. It’s all laid out with recipes, shopping lists and preparation instructions. I never thought our menus were so light but I could work with this book.  I’m checking it out from the library.

Make-A-Mix: I don’t use all the recipes in this book but I do like the cookie and the baking mixes. I own this one.
More Make Your Own Groceries: This is an excellent book for freezer cooking and making staples. I have no idea why it is so expensive on Amazon. I own a copy. There are two editions, 1 and 2. I have both. 2 is the cover of the link and 1 has a yellow cover. They are both excellent.

Keeping Track

For keeping up on what’s inside I printed up a new sheet from my planner (yes I use Vintage Household Notes too) and put it in a sleeve. For now I taped it to the top but I’m looking at other ways to attach it. I opted for writing the ususal suspects in pen and then hash marks in pencil for how many I have going there.

I hope some of this has been a help to someone.

PICS

I feel silly.

I’m hugging the thing like I’ve never seen an electric appliance before.

I just bought a chest freezer.

It’s about time.

I’ve been asking for one for many years.

I guess maybe it was because I requested it as a birthday present.

My husband never thought I was serious.

My mom never thought I was serious.

My sister just laughed.

Other family members gave me blank looks.

Friends sympathized said they would drop hints.

Finally I told my husband I would buy the freezer from my very small biz earnings.

He saw I was serious.

He talked me into a bigger freezer saying the family (that’s what we call his earnings) would chip in.

We talked about ordering half a cow. We settled on helping out an elderly family member by preparing many meals we could deliver.

He picked my babyup today (we saved on delivery. Gotta love Sears)

I’m hugging it.

This is how I used to get by.

Here's a breakdown of what's in my freezer. Click image to make it larger.

Taste of Home is having a cookbook sale. I’m a subscriber to SEVERAL of this publisher’s magazines and own several of their books and cookbooks. This is a bargain!

The healthy recipes are delicious. And I love their recipe makeovers.

There’s a cookbook for everyone so don’t miss out.

Shop Taste of Home $5 Cookbook sale. Cookbooks up to 80% off. Expires 5-2-11

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve noticed my grocery bill creeping up again. It’s very annoying. It really ramped up when they opened a new healthy organic grocery store near us last year. The produce was so nice I found myself trying every veggie on the block.

But!

This has become annoying. I’ve been making sure to be very diligent about cutting coupons and trying to buy items on sale but it’s not budging much yet.

This also means I need to be much more diligent about using what I have on hand. I’m very good for filling up a pantry and then still buying items when I have stuff in the pantry. Irritates my husband. Yes I have lived some places in my childhood where food was very difficult to get and this stays with you.

I’m also staring a spring garden where before I usually only dealt with summer veggies. Since I’m new at this I’m expecting minimal results but it’s still nice to know what we are capable of.

And I do detest shopping around. I don’t like driving to begin with so going from store to store does not make me happy. Then gas prices made our car gas bill almost double. Another reason to stick to my guns about shopping at only 2 stores…unless the deal is just unbelievable.

So what do you do to keep grocery prices down? Especially when it comes to dealing with special diets (food allergies etc.)

Image by chotda via Flickr

Our daughter loves fruit so much but as any child also loves her sweets so I had to ask..

“If I placed a plate of fruit, a bowl of icecream, and a cupcake in front of you which would you go for first”.

She said “Fruit!” right away.

Her father said “She would grab them all at once.”

How about you? Which would you grab first?

I’d go for the cupcake.

And by the way Cook’s Country has a free webisode of making the delicious cream cupcakes pictured. It’s one of the mini videos right on the home page. I haven’t ventured to try them yet (using soy-free chocolate) but I am extremely tempted.

I had a hunk of chuck roast in the freezer and wasn’t really sure how I wanted to cook it.

Perusing my many cookbooks, software and the internet it seemed that Chuck Roast in Foil was a winner with many.

So I decided to give it a go.

The original recipe called for soy (I’m allergic), and espresso (don’t have any). So I omitted those and just rubbed the meat down with a spicy cornstarch mix.

Placed over some cut up red potatoes potatoes, onions, and carrots and popped in the oven in the early afternoon we had a delicious dinner that evening to be repeated on Sunday where we served 9 after church. It was so easy it’s shameless.

Stephanie from Gruve Mom Time’s generously shares the recipe here.