#also I need to put the butter in the freezer now. it was on sale at a grocery store I walked to but it took much longer than I thought

[shatterthefragments]

“Thank you for choosing us”

I chose you bc you had online booking (which turned out not to be working) and next day and same day appointments available. And even the oil change alone turned out to be over $100 and I’ve been told that if it is I’m being ripped off (but maybe times just have truly increased the oil prices) and just. Could’ve saved a bit more than half the cost if I was just a bit more pushy and willing to jack the car up. But. Anyway. Might just go home, shower, and maybe cry a bit.

Also I feel like I have a cough but i might just need some liquid bc I can’t have my water bottle bc it touched way too much outside stuff that I picked up while waiting two hours :( idk. Maybe a nap. (Edit: ok yeah hydration is so important still tired but ah well)

[akwolfgrl]

LFT PART 37

Sanji made his last round inside his galley, Mr. Noodles sat perched on a bar stool watching him. The roses that Zoro got him were still sitting in the jar where he left them. He needed to figure out what he wanted to do with them. Sanji slid some butter into his apron pocket to soften.

Sanji finished unloading everything he had bought at the market this morning. There were still a few cartes of things waiting for him to deconstruct. Sanji had scored a crate of fresh unwashed eggs. He would water glass them later tonight. He left out the stuff he needed to make a batch of kimchi and a new marinade for Luffy's jerky. The meat was in the freezer to firm up for easier slicing. He also left out the prime rib he got on sale for dinner tonight. He had the perfect seasoning for them.

Sanji cut the core of napa cabbages out, placing them into the bucket he was using for a compost pile, they used to have one on the Baratie they would give it to a local farmer who they worked with to get fresh produce. There were things that even he could not salvage and use, but the compost was a good compromise since it fertilized and grew more food. He split the leafy vegetable apart with his hands. It was hard to get used to such a quiet kitchen. He was used to the hustle and bustle of the Baratie. The chefs arguing, the waiters yelling out food orders. Everything about the kitchen was loud and controlled chaos. Well, Sanji did sort of miss having someone he could talk to.

“OK so I know you're a cat, and you don't understand what I'm saying, but I don't care. Right now, I'm making kimchi. It's spicy, sour, and so good. A chef who used to work at the Baratie before settling ashore and marrying a sweet woman showed me how to make it,” Sanji began to chop the pieces of cabbage up. “I'm doing the shortcut method. Usually, you don't chop it up, but I like it better this way,” Sanji put all the cabbage into the large bowl. “Then we just wash and salt the cabbage until it wilts and the water from the inside of the cabbage is drawn out by the salt,” Sanji would leave it overnight with something heavy on top.

Mr. Noodles had at some point hopped from his stool to wind his way around Sanji's legs purring. He was ecstatic to have something small and cute to care for. Clementine may have been Zeff’s cat but she did like him and barely tolerated the other chefs. It had been his job to brush her long silky golden fur. She had been a very pretty kitty, with one gold eye and one blue. Mr. Noodles was of course very handsome with his soft slick black fur.

“Zeff my old man, although I'd never call him that to his face, had a ship cat, her name was Clementine,” Sanji took out the bowl he used previously for the marinade. Mixing soy sauce, worcestershire, orange juice, and zest , he whisked in honey, brown sugar, grated ginger, and chopped garlic. He threw some habaneros into his mortar and grinded them down into a nice paste before adding them as well. “I remember the look on Zeff’s face after we got off the Rock. Clementine had gotten off their pirate ship shortly before they attacked the Orbit. It's said that cats can sense doom. Anyway, we stayed on an island while we recovered, and one day, she walked right up to Zeff as if she had only been out for a stroll. She died shortly before Luffy came crashing in. Zeff had been practically testy lately, so that didn't help him at all,” Sanji covered the marinade and placed it into the fridge.

“I think after I'm done with my prep, I'll head back out for some personal shopping and check out the fish market. Maybe I'll be nice to our sentient plant life and pick up a sword cleaning kit. He doesn't have much money and would be more focused on buying swords. Why he needs three? I'm not sure, but that's his thing, I suppose,” Sanji took a paper towel to dry the prime ribs, or else it would reject the butter. He stabbed holes into the top of the meat. While he did know how to trim meat, it had come pre-trimmed and on sale to good of a deal to pass up. “I haven't seen him use it at all while we've been on this ship and there's no way that his sword hasn't been well kept in the past,” He took the softened butter out of his pocket and upwarped it, placing it into a small bowl. “Maybe I'll grab some ink for Nami-swan! I can't get Marimo and not my sweet Nami,” Sanji tossed in chopped rosemary and thyme, salt, pepper, Dijon mustard, and a bit of worcestershire then he mixed it. “I should pick another notebook while I'm out, I might as well grab something for Luffy and Usopp while I'm at it. Just so I don't have to hear them whining.”

Sanji stabbed holes into the fatty part of the meat and used butter to lube up the sliced garlic and rosemary, slipping them into the holes. He coated the prime ribs in the rest of the butter before placing them in the fridge. After a quick clean-up, Sanji was ready to head out. With a goodbye scratch to Mr. Noodles Sanji left the Going Merry

[walks-the-ages]

I think Tumblr ate my other post, so here's the short and sweet version above the cut:

January 2022:

*literally* every single week, every price-change night, grocery prices are going up.

There's four weeks in a month and that means grocery prices are going up at least 4x every month.

If you have the means, please consider stocking up on the staple foods of your households.

Don't clear the shelves or anything, but if you can, try to invest in a chest freezer (we got one for $200 a few years ago, you might be able to find them cheaper used), and maybe start grabbing an extra loaf or two of bread, and extra box or two of butter, and putting the extras in the freezer.

Stock up on staples that you know you will use.

Start buying the big boxes of instant oatmeal.

Start buying the big bags of rice.

Start buying big bags of the different kinds of dried beans (these can also be used as seeds to grow your own in the garden! Simply plant directly in the grown after your last frost, popping them in the soil and covering lightly)

Stock up on potatoes, and onions, and look up the best ways to store them (seperate from each other!) So rhat they last for months; if they start to sprout, you can plant them in containers. (Potatoes will grow more potatoes, while onions will grow greens and eventually flower and set seed that you can plant at the correct time for your zone.)

Stock up on sweet potatoes. (Cut the end off of one while you're prepping them and sit it propped up in a glass of water. It will send down roots and send up shoots-- once the shoots are long enough, gently break them off the sweet potato peice and plant directly, or stick into water to root further before transplanting.

.Sweet potato leaves can be eaten like spinach, and the vines if left to spread over the ground as they grow will root and form even more sweet potatoes.

Though they both have "potato" in the name, sweet potatoes and regular potatoes are completely seperate species and you should *never ever* eat the plant section of a potato plant.

If you are lucky enough to have your potato plant flower, hand pollinate it, let it set *inedible* fruit, and save the seeds when the fruits are fully ripened. Again, do not eat the fruit, it's poisonous-- but you now have TPS, or true potato seed. Clean it, dry it for a few days with a light fan, and store in a cool dark place like your other seeds. You can now grow your own unique potato varieites next year and save the tuber's of any that turn out well to clone them in the traditional way)

If your fridge is actually organized, you can stock up on apples that are on sale and store them in the fridge-- many of the newer varieites such as Cosmic Crisp and Envy are bred for storage; CC can last up to 6 months in the fridge with proper storage.

Stock up on canned foods your family actually likes, as well as canned goods such as "cream of" soups that can be mixed with rice to create a flavorful meal.

Stock up on ramen noodles-- not much, but it's something, and a hot meal even in the poorest of times. Grab spices and seasonings to refresh your pantry so you can jazz up even simple meals.

If the garden center in your local grocery store is set up, get your seeds early and learn when to plant them in your area, and how to save seeds from what you grow so you don't need to buy seeds again.

If your tap water isn't good (aka like 90% of Americans) stock up on gallons of water, as well as flavoring packets to make the tap water more palatable.

If you drink coffee, get at least one container of instant coffee, and a container of powder creamer if you usually use liquid.

Stock up on frozen meats that are still relatively cheap compared to their fresh counterparts, or buy fresh meat when it is on sale and freeze it, taking steps to prevent freezer burn. Meat prices are going up around a dollar per pound (or more!) each week that I have done the price changes on fresh meat.

Again, don't clear out the shelves, and I'm not trying to panic anyone.

But I work in a grocery store, and every single week I am watching prices go up over and over again.

[leavesofolive]

🌞🧹🌻Hearth Witch Tips!🌻🧹🌞

04: Your kitchen eats with you!

Just like with the rest of the house, what you put into the kitchen also heavily affects its energy. When you treat the hearth in certain ways, it reacts in certain ways. Your relationship with any room in the house is give-and-take. That means that if you don’t give back occasionally, the room will grow cold and stop appreciating your presence. But there are plenty of ways to mend your relationship! And the first step is to identify the problem!

From my experience, there are three main reasons why the kitchen stops being a warm and inviting place: 1) You are filling the cupboards with too much toxic, processed foods; 2) You aren’t spending enough time in that room; 3) Or you aren’t keeping the room clean enough.

When there’s a problem in the hearth, it’s always either one of these things or some combination of them. We’ll start with number three since it’s the easiest to explain. The kitchen should be anyone’s top priority to keep clean. It’s where all of your food, the nutrition and fuel of your physical and spiritual bodies, comes from! What you eat is your first defense against illness, injury, and your mental health. If the kitchen is filthy, then the food you take into your body will also begin to develop the same properties.

To keep the kitchen clean, I always start my day by washing last night’s dishes and give the counters a quick wipe. Once a month, I take stock of what’s in the fridge and freezer and scrub them out to prevent bacteria build-up. Sweeping the kitchen floors happens once a week and takes me all of three minutes to complete, tops. Once per season, normally at the beginning, I scrub the floors with soap and water, descale the coffee maker, wipe down the other appliances, and clean out the cupboards. So the only true “cleaning days” for the kitchen is four days out of the entire year. The rest of the time, the chores only take me about 30 minutes. As a quick tip, rinsing your dishes before setting them in the sink speeds up the dish washing process a ton! I’ve personally never trusted dishwashers since they don’t clean stuff well enough and it’s easier, faster, and far more cost effective to do it by hand.

The next problem the kitchen’s energy might be suffering from is how much time you’re spending there. First, spending a lot of time in the kitchen is a great thing! It absorbs the energy you feed to it, so when you don’t go in the kitchen very often or just don’t spend much time in there to begin with, the kitchen grows darker and colder. It loses the warmth and emotion and love that would’ve been sinking into it when you aren’t there.

The way to fix this problem is actually really easy! Cooking your own meals ensures that you are in there for a good amount of time each day because of the prep work and meal planning, etc. Plus, you get healthier, tastier food that way too! If you can’t cook all that well yet, don’t worry! Just like any skill, there’s no talent involved in learning something. It just depends on how much effort you apply to it. Another way to boost the hearth’s energy is to just hang out in that room. Invite some friends over, set out a snack tray, and just chill in the kitchen. Of course, since it’s pandemic right now, it’s best to wait until that’s over with to try this approach. But you, yourself, can still hang out in the kitchen!

The last problem, and a very, very common one in this day and age, is the influence of toxic food. Just like how your house absorbs energy from the land its on and what its built with, the kitchen also absorbs energy from the ingredients you keep within it. Toxic foods include anything processed or with a bunch of added sugars, and even GMO ingredients to some extent due to the trace chemicals that are still on the crops. These kinds of foods, if that’s the only thing in your house, will rot the energy. Not to mention, easy to grab snacks also end up causing you to spend a lot less time in the kitchen if that’s all you eat. Needless to say, no one eats healthy all the time. I don’t either! But having only toxic food in your kitchen isn’t great for you or the hearth.

Once again, cooking comes to the rescue! Even if you’re bad at it, it’s the thought that counts and little by little, as your skills grow and improve, the kitchen will learn to help guide you. There have been many times where I’d be stuck on how to fix something and a bottle of spice would fall of the shelf right next to me. If you listen to the kitchen, it will listen to you, too! Even if you don’t have time to cook, snacks like apples, berries, seeds, nuts, and dried meats are all healthy alternatives! I usually keep kale chips in the house for some yummy, salty crunchiness!

                                    ------------------------------

If you are worried about cost with this approach (believe me, due to my own situation it’s been a struggle at times), I’ve found out several tips and tricks to significantly lower the grocery bill. Anymore, my bill would actually be bigger if I bought crap food instead! Here’s my advice:

☀  Plan your week ahead! I always plan four meals a week that I’ll cook, and three days that I’ll scavenge for snacks and leftovers. I also stick to the rule of “one simple, one chicken, one meatless, one freebie” to remain more cost effective! The “simple” meal is just something I can make quickly if I know I’ll be short on time. The reason for have one of the meals be chicken is because it’s a much less expensive meat than beef or pork, and it’s a little better for the environment. The meatless meal is for the same reasoning. Meat is expensive and commercial brands are horrible for both the environment and the animals themselves. When I do buy meat, I make sure to buy local, grass-fed, organic meat as often as I can afford to. Keep in mind that every time you purchase anything, you are casting your vote for what is acceptable for society to continue. The “freebie” meal is just whatever I’ve been craving. If I want some kind of beef, I wait until this day.

☀  Learn to bake your own bread! For those of us with the time, this is a great way to save money and to stay healthy! Basic, white bread is actually pretty easy to make and only uses a couple ingredients. Those ingredients also go a long way. It costs me about 24¢ to make one loaf of bread because things like flour, sugar, salt, butter, honey, and yeast are all things that you buy once and can use for several loaves before you have to buy them again! It’s also not as time consuming as you’d think. Yes, it takes about 2 hours, but most of that time is proofing so you can easily be running around doing other things in between.

☀  Grow a garden! Even if it’s just a small, window herb garden, it can take the edge off of your overall food cost. Portobello mushrooms are also super easy to grow inside with minimal effort and equipment. If you have outdoor space, planting a small garden with the ingredients you use the most can help immensely!

☀  Only buy what you need! I know those sales look crazy tempting, but most of them are actually bogus and don’t actually save you any money. Think about what you are actually going to use before it goes bad and stick to your list. The bottom shelves at the store, aka the ones not in your direct line of sight, are usually where the grocery stores hide the better priced goods. At the back of most stores that have bakeries, there’s also usually a spot to get baked goods left over from the previous day for a slightly cheaper price. Day-old baked novelties like bread, cookies, and cakes are still perfectly good, and much easier to enjoy where you don’t have to spend as much!

☀  Check what’s already in your fridge before making your list! This is a huge one, since it prevents food waste, which in turn prevents money waste! What can you make during this week that can use up some of the ingredients leftover from last week? You’ll be impressed how quickly your food cost drops when you aren’t throwing things away. Waste not, want not! This trick also applies in another way, as well. When making your weekly meal plans, what types of foods use similar ingredients? If one meal calls for a slightly pricier ingredient, what other food can you cook with that ingredient to make the cost worth it? This also ensures that you get full use of things without wasting them. For example, this week I bought some fresh mozzarella cheese. Because this item is a little more expensive, I’m using it to make both the tomato mozzarella sandwiches and the beef wellingtons I’m making this week!

☀  Buy mostly produce! One of the best ways to lower your bill while still eating healthy is to simply add more fruits and veggies into your diet! There are so many tasty recipes that call for these babies that you’ll never run out of options, and there’s several things out there for everyone! Because I deal with sensory issues, I had to experiment a lot with what textures and tastes I could handle, especially on the bad days, but even still I found an over-abundance of things I love to eat. Fresh produce is way less expensive than meat, and much less expensive than many of the more mainstream snacks like chips or other processed foods.

                                     ------------------------------ All in all, taking care of your kitchen will also end up taking care of you, as well! Spending time there, actually using the kitchen the way it’s supposed to be, and just keeping it clean can work wonders in opening up your home and making it ten times warmer and more inviting! Trust me, your health and home will thank you for it!

[themanicnami]

Grocery Tips From a Fellow Broke Person

So I know I have been talking about budgeting food often recently but its because I just had a bunch of bills stacked up and so I am breaking out all of my personal tools for groceries for the next few months. I feel several on this site are int eh same boat, and if needed here are some of my personal tips on grocery shopping.

If you can’t get fresh get long lived

Simply put, we know how healthy it is to eat fresh veggies and fruits, it is important to eat them in your diet for numerous health reasons. But fresh is not always an option, depending on where you live, fresh may be expensive or it may be a time of year where fresh produce may have gone up in price or you may not have a place to store them for one reason or another.

There is nothing wrong with frozen vegetables! They are affordable, last a long time, easily stored and are easy to cook. You can find them for around .50 cents to about 2.47 a bag depending on the brandy, type and size of bag. Sometimes this is more affordable than the fresh. 

Canned veggies are also always an option. They may have their downsides with studies showing too much preserved food can cause health issues, they are still a better option than just straight ramen and noodles every day! They still hold vitamins in them that your body needs. You can even buy sodium free canned vegetables now and ones stored in broth. If you don’t have refrigeration or a freezer, canned vegetables are an option for you.

The same goes for fruit! You can find frozen berries of all sorts in the freezer section and also canned fruit can be high in sugars but when in a bind, sometimes it is a better option than nothing at all.

 Buy In Bulk

If this option is available for you try to buy things in bulk, they may be pricier in the moment but if they are non-perishable food items with a long shelf life they can last you long enough not to worry about buying them again for weeks or even months. Some bulk items that I recommend looking into for their long storage life would be: rice, pastas, dried beans, lentils, peanut butter/other nut butter products and cooking oils. 

If you are able to afford buying the little boxing display sized of items sometimes that is for the best. At my personal grocery store you can buy a small pallet (for the shelf) of ramen for 5 dollars. Though it is not ideal, it is a good base to mix things in with as I spoke about in my previous post. I can also buy bulk of boxes of macaroni and cheese, boxed rice, boxed pasta sides and trays of soup. I have happily done this before because all of them had long shelf lives of a year or more in some cases and I still have them in my pantry ready for eating.

Proteins, Proteins, Proteins

Meat can be expensive we all know this, but luckily there are some affordable meat options! Depending on your local grocer they may have a display near the entrance of on sale meats, usually this is due to overstock or because they want to put fresher cuts up and need to get rid of their current stock. I have found 20 piece chicken legs for 3 dollars due to this as well as pork chops for 6. 

If you do not have a sale item for overstocked meats, you need to compare your prices. Check what they have, sometimes you’ll still find sales or good deals. In general - chicken is the least expensive meat option. Sausages and ground meat tend to be less expensive than prime cuts. Beef in general tends to be more pricey while pork can range. Depending on your area, this may vary but if you have the storage for meats, fresh chicken and sausages are often your best bet for affordable choices.

Eggs are wonderful options as well, they can store a while if you know how to pick them. When selecting eggs, if you know you will eat them go for the larger containers like around 18 eggs. They tend to be a better deal than getting the smaller options though always check your eggs for cracks or wetness on the container. If you are worried how fresh they are pick up an egg and shake it near your ear, if it feels dense and doesn’t make much noise then its good. If it feels very liquid like and makes sloshing sounds its close to going rotten and should not be bought.

Canned meats are always a good option for people who do not have a place to store frozen or fresh meat. Canned tuna shouldn’t be eaten a lot but it can be a good source for protein. It can be mixed into macaroni, ramen, rice, casseroles and more to add flavor. Try to buy tuna canned in water, it tends to be healthier than that stored in oil.

Canned chicken is always a good option as well, it can be eaten more regularly than tuna and can be cooked up into soups, rice, stir fry and more! Canned ham, spam, canned beef, crab and salmon are other canned meats that are often easily found in different types of grocery stores.

Beans can be easily bought dried and in bulk which makes them a good choice especially for those who may not be fans of the meat options above. You can also buy them canned for easy cooking like in soups, chili and stews.

Sales and Coupons and Grocery Store Brand

Always look for sales, if you see items on sale for a great discount and its something you will eat and it can be stored well, stock up! It prevents you from having to buy it for more later. Coupons can come in the mail though it may appear as junk mail, if they are for the grocery store you shop at, give them a look. There may be some that may be worth while. Make sure you read their terms, some are only good during certain times or if a certain amount is spent. You can also check for product coupons which work on all stores because they come directly from the production company. These can often be found online or on the company’s website. 

Sometimes brands are more expensive than the grocery store’s own brand. In these cases it may be a matter of taste in some things but with other things like canned vegetables, tuna, rice, noodles etc it can be almost a dollar cheaper to buy the grocery store’s brand with little to no difference with the brand named items. I personally always buy canned veggies that are from my local grocer as well as tuna and canned chicken - I have found they taste the same as the other brands but in the end saves me ten to twenty dollars after shopping.

Happy shopping everyone!

[the-alice-of-hearts]

Broke Kid Cook Book

Recipes under the cut. The first paragraph is me talking about the cook book.

So I was talking to a couple people at my work about grocery shopping and one of them commented that they spent so much money on groceries and I said, my roommate and I spend like 100USD a week for us. This floored her, so when I was like “yeah it’s kinda a lot, but we splurge now since we have solid 40 hour a week jobs”. I didn’t realize that she was surprised because 100 sounded like too little. So I asked her if she wanted me to type up the recipes that we ate when we only spent like 60USD a week on groceries. SO! Since I already typed them up, I am giving them to you all as well!

Chicken and Sauce:

1lb chicken (you can use less)

1 can cream of chicken soup (get the cheapest option, original I think it says “great for cooking”)

Cut chicken into bite sized pieces Brown in pan Once cooked through add 1 family sized can of cream of chicken soup

Can be served with rice or mashed potatoes. Potatoes taste better, but rice is cheaper

Stroganoff:

1lb ground beef (can be less but this way you will have leftovers for a day)

Noodles (I like bowties because they are correct, but you can pick pretty much any small noodles you want. They should never be more than 1.50$)

2 cans gravy (my mom uses beef gravy, I like to use turkey gravy with the ground beef)

Smallest container you can find of sour cream

Cook noodles Brown the meat Add both cans of gravy to the browned meat Add a large spoon full of the sour cream. This part is a little tricky, but you want enough that the gravy concoction turns about 3 shades lighter.

Serve over noodles!

Fancy Mashed Potatoes:

Potatoes (I like to use red potatoes, but russets are usually cheaper)

Milk

Butter or margarine

Salt and pepper

Lunch meat

Cheese (optional)

It’s literally just mashed potatoes but add lunch meat and cheese if you want. Lunch meat costs like 1$ if you get the cheap kind, and cheese is the same. I like to use red potatoes with this and leave the skin on. By eating the skins of the potatoes with the nutritional value of potatoes and adding lunch meat you are eating a nutritionally complete meal.

Chilli Mac:

Noodles (we use shells, but once again you can use whatever small noodles you want)

Ground beef 1lb

2 small cans of tomato sauce (should be about 50 cents each)

Chilli powder

Make noodles Brown the beef Once the noodles are done add the beef to the noodles Add in the cans of tomato sauce Add in chilli powder. A lot of chili powder. You kinda feel this one out as well. Add until it tastes good basically

Breaded chicken:

Chicken 1lb (honestly you just need however much feels like enough)

3 eggs

Breading. I use the itiallian seasoned stuff, but just pick what’s cheap

Boxed stuffind or rice-a-roni

Vegetable oil (once again get the cheapest option.)

Make breaded chicken. It’s that simple. In case you haven’t made breaded chicken before here are the steps.

Crack the eggs into a bowl. Wisk. Coat the chicken in the egg wash. Cover chicken in breading. Fry in the vegetable oil. Make the stuffing or rice-a-roni according to instructions. It’s a really simple meal, but it tastes good and everything reheats really well.

That’s all the ones I know off the top of my head. When I find the rest of them I will add them on. These are just really easy to make and filling. 

The meals should be less than 20USD each, a couple of them are like 10. 

The biggest thing is the cost of meat. If you are able to I like to buy meat on sale. 

And honestly sometimes I will check around for the cheapest option. If you have a big enough freezer you can watch for meat sales and get enough for the month. Otherwise learn when your grocery store gets their meat shipment. The night before they will red tag a lot of the meat. I also like to go shopping at like 11pm because that is when they are rolling out sales like that. 

Another really good dinner option is get a premade rotisserie chicken from walmart. It’s 5USD and will feed two people. I like the lemongrass one, but they also have a rosemary one. Pair it with a pasta-roni, rice-a-roni, or stuffing you have a full meal for like 6USD. When we have this it usually feeds the two of us and we still have leftovers.

So there you go! 6 meals that should give you dinners and leftovers for lunches!

A few last tips:

Margarine is cheaper than butter

Never buy fresh fruits or vegetables unless you have a specific plan for them. They will otherwise go to waste and there is no reason to just throw out money.

Buying milk by the galleon is only worth it if you are drinking a lot of milk. Otherwise just buy half gallons.

Milk is on sale every other week at walgreens. The off brand walmart milk is still cheaper, but if you want on brand higher quality milk that will last longer you can plan accordingly.

Milk is cheaper at big walmart. The neighborhood market is always more expensive.

Focus on getting enough calories before focusing on “balanced” meals. Starches and carbs are going to help you a lot more.

Meat isn’t very important. Put it at the bottom of your priorities list

You need 1600 calories to stay alive at minimum

If you do not have the physical energy to make food you can get the steamer microwave meals. They are 2.50USD each (sometimes they are even on sale) and if you eat two of them you actually get a filling dinner.

Mac and cheese is a cheap meal that doesn’t take a lot of energy. Adding canned tuna or chicken can make it feel more filling

Other low energy cheap meals: the Dinty Moore microwaveable meals plus a 5-min rice single microwave serve make a filling meal that you only need to microwave.  

That’s everything I have for you. If anyone wants to add on their cheap meals please feel free! 

[kitchennoobfood]

A Better Fruit Smoothie-- Two Variations

If you’re still putting ice cubes in your smoothies, stop right now. It just makes them grainy, crunchy, and watery without adding any real flavor or substance. It also makes it melt faster.

All you really need for a good fruit smoothie is frozen fruit and a liquid to thin it with, but I’ll give my two basic, go-to recipes that make a really tasty (and totally healthy) smoothie that is actually smooth, and doesn’t feel like you’re chewing glass shards because of the ice.

Blueberry Pomegranate Smoothie

Ingredients:

One fresh banana, cut into chunks

Two handfuls frozen blueberries

One scoop vanilla protein powder OR large scoop vanilla yogurt of choice

Pomegranate juice (enough to get to desired consistency)

Directions:

Put the banana in first, then the powder/yogurt, then the blueberries. This keeps the powder from sticking to the sides, but also helps the blender actually get started instead of getting stuck on thick frozen berries.

Pour in enough pomegranate juice to almost meet the top of the banana layer.

Blend in pulses, adding small amounts of juice if it gets stuck. Continue blending until you reach your desired consistency. (I like mine soft-serve fro-yo consistency, and I eat it with a spoon. Don’t judge.)

“Sunshine” Fruit Smoothie

Ingredients:

Frozen strawberries (slices are easier to deal with)

Frozen peach slices or chunks

Frozen mango chunks

Can pineapple chunks (with juice)

Peach yogurt

Optional: kiwi slices, or banana slices; orange juice

Directions:

Spoon about half a cup of peach yogurt into the blender first. If using any banana or kiwi, add it in on top. Don’t use a lot of banana, tho, it will make the end product very thick and you won’t taste as much of the citrus. (Kiwi can make it kind of crunchy because of the seeds on top of the strawberry seeds already in there. It be tasty tho)

Place a handful each of frozen strawberries, peaches, and mangoes into a bowl. Rinse them under lukewarm water, just enough that the outer edges get mildly squishy. This keeps the blender from locking up, because frozen strawberries and peaches get HARD. Separate any stuck-together pieces, and place them all into the blender on top of the yogurt.

Open your canned pineapple, toss in about half a cup of the chunks, and drain the juice into a separate container. Store the leftover pineapple, but leave the juice out because you’ll need it in a minute.

Start blending in pulses, and once the yogurt has been blended with some of the fruit, add in some of the pineapple juice. If using orange juice, you can also add some of it in here. Keep blending and adding juice(s) until you reach your desired consistency.

It’s kind of silly to make a recipe for a smoothie, I know, but basically what I’m saying is use frozen fruit instead of ice. Also, be aware of how you layer in the blender, putting the frozen fruit in first makes it way harder than it has to be.

Tips:

-You can make any kind of smoothie you want by starting with frozen fruit, up to two fresh fruits, and adding some kind of flavored liquid to it. Juice, milk, soymilk/almond milk, even something like heavy whipping cream (that’ll make it very fluffy). Yogurt is always optional, but adds a nice texture and a good amount of protein.

-Don’t add citrus juice and cow’s milk to the same smoothie, or at least not at the same time, or the milk will start curdling. Try mixing in the milk first, then add the citrus juice at the end. Citrus fruit and milk is generally fine unless it’s fresh pineapple.

-It always makes more than you think it will. I know it doesn’t look like a lot, but take it from my own experience and hubris, under-estimate rather than putting in another handful of blueberries. Unless you have a buddy with you to help you eat the mass amounts of leftovers, you will regret it.

-You can shove tons of spinach into a fruit smoothie and you’ll hardly ever notice a taste difference.

-Get a long spoon handy for poking the smoothie down and stirring it; sometimes air bubbles form around the blades. Never stir while the blender is spinning!

-Frozen fruit is way cheaper than fresh, except for when fresh fruit is in season and on sale. Consider buying a ton of fresh fruit during those times and cutting/freezing yourself. Freezer ziploc bags are where it’s at.

-If you want to use nut butter in your smoothies, layer it in between fruits (or halves of the banana). This will keep it from sticking to either the blades or the sides, and will ensure it gets all mixed in.

-Quick blender clean: rinse til you see no visible grime, add two drops of dish soap, water up to the first or second line, dry the bottom, and return it to the base. Blend that sucker into a froth. Rinse. Clean! (This shouldn’t replace regular deep cleaning of blenders, you still have to disassemble it every once in a while, and especially if you blended something really thick, sticky, or fibrous. But it does save time.)

[mythicaliz]

cheap eats tips

I got these asks last night but wanted to wait until i was on my laptop to answer them. so here are some ideas. they arent really recipes, just tips

tl/dr

Equipment

my number one way to save money is a chest freezer. obviously not everyone has the money to buy one or the space for one but you can find smaller ones on kijiji. alternatively, if you have a parent or friend who has a large freezer that you can easily access and is willing to give you some room in it that works too. we used to have a basket in my husband’s parents freezer before we got our own, and we give up some space in ours to a friend who lives near by. that being said, use whatever freezer space you have to stock up on things (more on this below)

a crockpot is also a great tool to have and you can find them cheap at thrift stores. It means spending 5 minutes in the morning and coming home to dinner already made. it can be used for so many things. there are no shortage of quick, cheap crockpot recipes on the internet but ill include some ideas below

Meat

- i pretty much only buy meat on clearance or sale. clearance meat is just a day or 2 before the sell by date so they have to get rid of it fast. it’s still fine quality. i just freeze it immediately (if you aren’t going to use the whole pack in one meal portion it out into freezer bags). This is why having a big freezer is handy. Once a pack of 3 chicken legs was on clearance for $2. we bought 24 of them and used them on the bbq, baked, in soups and stews, pulled the meat off for casseroles etc. we had like 6 months of chicken for under $50

-save your bones and scraps. have a bag on the go for beef scraps and one for chicken scraps in the freezer (do the same with vegetable peelings, ends, onion skins, etc.) throw a bag of veggie scraps and meat scraps/bones in your crockpot. cover with water and add whatever spices you like, peppercorns, bayleaf whatever. add a good amount of salt and a splash of vinegar. both of these help break down the bones and pull all the minerals from them. cook in the crockpot for 12-24 hours (you may need to add more water). strain it and you now have amazing bone broth which is incredibly good for you and a base for any soup. if you have the space you can freeze in ice cube trays and then put in a ziplock to have convenient broth chunks to throw in pretty much anything. but you can also just freeze it in tupperware, or zliplock bags or whatever.

-if you eat bacon save your grease. keep a mason jar in the fridge and drain any grease off into the jar. then you can sautee veggies and stuff in it and it’s already so delicious

-cut up meat and put it in soups, stews, casseroles etc rather than making it the centre of the dish. if you have 2 people you’re likely to cook 2 full chicken breasts if that’s the main part of your meal, but you could probably get away with one if you are making a dish where the chicken is cut up with lots of veggies and maybe some beans on top of pasta. get it? 

-not meat but eggs are always good to have on hand. inexpensive and so much you can do with them. (in an oven proof skillet: sautee up some veggies, whisk up some eggs and throw them in. top with a bit of cheese if you like. throw it in the oven until eggs are set. you have a fritatta you can eat for dinner or cut into wedges and eat hot or cold for breakfast or lunch)

Produce

-lettuce is a scam. don’t buy it. it’s expensive, has almost no nutrition and is pretty shitty for the environment. Spinach or cabbage is a better choice because you can make salads with it but if it starts to get past it’s prime you can cook it or freeze it and throw it in a soup or stirfry later

-root vegetables last a long time and are great. plus they add heartiness to any meal

-use your most perishable produce first, then move onto the heartier stuff. frozen is also great, and sometimes is more nutritious than fresh thats out of season

-apples. they last forever and if they get sad you can make apple sauce (in your crockpot! cup em up, skin on and all, add a little cinnamon and some water and cook until mush. then blend it up) or baked apples (cut em in half and scoop out the core a little. add a bit of butter and brown sugar in the hole. if you have walnuts or pecans you can throw some in there too. bake until soft)

Legumes etc

-legumes, beans, pulses are all amazing sources of protein and inexpensive. you can save even more money buy buying dried ones and rehydrating them in your crockpot. (rinse beans and put in crockpot with 2 inches of water above beans. they should take about 6 hours on high to be tender)

-lentils are also great and have a really nice flavour. you can also use them to thicken soups, one of my favourite dishes is called  Mujadara. it’s lebanese (like me!) you slowly cook a cut up onion in olive oil until it’s all caramalized and delicious. set it aside and cook equal parts rice and brown lentils. you can use water or broth for more flavour. cook until tender, top with your friend onions and it’s like heaven. i’ll cut up a tomato and cucumber and make a little salad on the side with it. 

shopping

-stock up on things when you can. say canned tomatoes are on sale. maybe you can’t afford to buy 10 of them, but even if you buy one or two extra cans then you’ve paid less and have them on hand when you need them. also, i realize room can be an issue. don’t feel like all your food has to stay in your kitchen. in college i had a bin under my bed with canned goods and pasta etc. as long as it’s nonperishable keep it wherever you can. 

-buy the largest size you can afford. for most things, it pays to buy in bulk. maybe you have a friend you can go halfsies on bigger items with. an example is rice. gigantic bags that could feed you for a year go on sale for $10. if you can, buy it.

-a lot of people live in food deserts. what that means is you live somewhere that it’s nearly impossible to walk to a grocery store so you end up shopping at convenience stores, gas stations and eating fast food. I suggest a well planned monthly shopping trip to a store that has good deals. Yeah you’ll pay for an uber, but you’ll save more than in the long run and have much healthier food. 

-don’t force yourself to eat things you dont like. so many people try to choke down kale. or rather they buy it and let it rot in their fridge. personally, i like kale, (im sure it helps that i fry up onions in bacon grease and then wilt kale in that :P) but just because it’s some super food doesn't mean you have to eat it or feel bad for not eating it. 

anyway that’s some advice!

[doulacollective]

Product Review - Shop Til You Drop!

by Kendra 

There are so many gifts you can give a pregnant woman or mama-to-be. When shopping online it is hard to know what will give you good quality for your value. Sacred Surrogacy recently reached out to us and asked us to review a bunch of their products for pregnancy and postpartum and we were happy to oblige! It is funny because we are inundated with so many places to purchase things (especially online) that sometimes you don’t look in a place that might not be your first go to (ie. Amazon, indigo etc.) and sometimes that is where you can find the most magical of gifts. 

Sacred Surrogacy is a movement that helps intended parents, surrogates and egg donors find deeper connections on their journey not only to each other but to themselves. They offer online classes, weekend retreats and box subscriptions. It is not a place I would have thought to look for gifts for myself when I was pregnant or for my friends but let me tell you, if you don’t have a peek at their store - you are missing out. They have beautiful gifts for you and friends, pregnant or not!

For all of the products we are reviewing today, click the link beside the price to shop! Or to view everything they offer, click HERE!

Now.. onto the fun part - reviews! 

Lip Balm

Here’s what it looks like:

This was the first thing I tested, of course ;) and, umm.. this stuff is LOVELY. Smooth on your lips, the shea butter flavour is subtle and not overpowering and it stays on for a while. Love this product and its only $2.50!! Super sleek look as well. The only catch is it’s not pocketable, meaning it’s too round and large to keep in your pocket, a purse or desk drawer is better and this might just be me but sometimes its hard to close. 

Cost: $2.50, to shop click here. 

Belly Bind

Here’s what it looks like:

Its soft, long and easy to use once you know how to wrap yourself. A belly bind is used to wrap your abdomen snuggly to help with the healing postpartum process. Its typically done within the first week of postpartum and goes up until about 40 days after your birth. This is a great gift for yourself if your pregnant or a mom-to-be. Keeping those muscles close together helps them to heal quicker and you will feel more secure as you move around your day and look after your little one. It’s like wrapping yourself in a hug! You can do it on top of your clothes or under and this fabric is nice and lightweight so you won’t be too hot. 

Cost: $14.99, to shop click here. 

Click here to see a great video to show you how to wrap yourself!

Meditation Shawl

Here’s what it looks like:

Its always lovely to sit back and meditate on life, on what you are scared of, looking forward to or just to give yourself a few minutes to recharge. Re-centering ourselves is so important – pregnant or not! This is a beautiful gift to help someone do just that. Its soft, lightweight and beautiful. At 74 inches long it’s easy to wrap around yourself while you are sitting to help keep you warm or it is long enough to double as a scarf! One side is hemmed and the other is left raw which makes the shawl look delicate. Lightweight enough to use in the summer and it comes in a variety of colours! This one is the pink shawl.  

Cost: $7.99, to shop click here. 

Yoni Mist

Here is what is looks like:

You will hear lots of people tell you to use padsicles. They are amazing, let me tell you, but it’s a bit annoying remember to go to the freezer every time you want to go to the bathroom and need to change your pad, especially when you are sleep deprived and it’s the middle of the night. Yoni mist can definitely have the same healing effects without having to go to the freezer. This spray is great to use on your pads or diapers (whichever you chose to wear after birth) to help heal and sooth your perineum. Just keep it in the bathroom and spray as you need. Made with distilled water, rose water, witch hazel, aloe vera gel and lavender essential oil it is the perfect combination and easy to use. I’m personally not a huge fan of the smell of rose water, which is what this smells the most like, but that comes down to personal preference. I personally would prefer it smelled like lavender as rose water reminds me of my grandmother’s perfume! The cost is super-efficient and this size of the bottle makes it easy to stash in your purse or diaper bag when you’re on the go which is a huge bonus in those early days. 

Cost: $4.99, to shop click here.

Connection Postcards

Here’s what they look like:

With a simple, lovely design these postcards are great to send to, well, anyone really! They have great messages like “thank you for being amazing!”, “you are the best”, and “sending you a big hug”. Who wouldn’t love to get that in the mail? Personally, I love getting traditional mail and send notes back and forth with a few friends. These would be perfect to brightened someone’s day, pregnant or not and they are nice and large so you have lots of space to write. 

Cost: $10.00 for a set of 6, to shop click here. 

Sitz Bath

Here’s what it looks like:

If you don’t know what a sitz bath is, visit our previous blog post to learn all about it here - http://doulacollective.tumblr.com/post/121020274489/sitz-bath. It’s so nice not to have to make the sitz bath yourself so this is a lovely gift that makes it easy for a momma after birth. You get three for the price, which is awesome. It smells lovely and consists of calendula blossoms, lavender, witch hazel leaves, and Himalayan pink salt. All the things you need to help heal your perineum and relax. If you haven’t tried a bath, it’s a perfect way to give yourself a break and take some time to recharge.

Cost: $11.99 for 3, to shop click here. 

Sacred Space Kit

Here’s what it looks like:

This is a really neat little kit. It comes with a candle, two dissolving papers, a fertility goddess charm, a mini salt bowl with salts and a description card. The candle is non-scented so easy to use in any space. The idea is to light the candle, pour the salts into the bowl and feel the intentions and love of those who manifested before you and to put your own dreams and hopes into the universe. Then write your fears onto the paper, you can place the paper in water or carefully burn it on the candle to release your fears and let go. The fertility goddess charm (not pictured above) is there to remind you of what you are doing and to reconnect you to your divine self. The salts smell wonderful and include bits of lavender and rose petals. This would be a great little ceremony to do for yourself or a loved one, especially for those who are preparing for birth or going through a change in your life. It can be a great release to get ready. It is also super affordable for what you get!

Cost: $10.99, to shop click here. 

Throat Chakra Kit OR Celestite Crystal

Here’s what it looks like:

Currently the throat chakra kit only comes in the parent communication box. This kit is intended to help you communicate freely by opening your throat chakra with a celestite crystal, essential oil and affirmations. You hold the crystal in your hands and repeat the affirmations provided. You can dab a little of the essential oils onto your throat to help you relax and be open. Make sure you give them a sniff as they are divine. If you purchase the box soon you will receive a roll on bottle which smells a lot like roses but if you purchase it down the road you will likely get the newest version which comes in a tin made with a beeswax balm that has sage, lavender and coconut oils. The beeswax is my fav out of the two, but as we have already established I’m not a huge lover of the smell of rose water. That said, the longer it stays on my skin the softer the smell gets and the more enjoyable it is to me. Both absorb into your skin nicely and both have an instant calming effect. If you don’t want to purchase the box, just the crystal is available for sale here.  

Cost: Box is $49.97 or just the crystal is $14.99, to shop for the box click here. 

New Beginnings Mala + New Beginnings Bracelet

Here’s what they look like:

These were by far my favourite things to receive to review. They are beautiful, made out of peach moonstone which is known as a feminine stone. It brings out the best in people, supports the heart as it stimulates the mind and soothes anxiety. It is also known to help you embrace the ebb and flow of female hormones. Wearing these has definitely helped bring a calm over me. I also get complimented on them every time I wear them. I love how both of them are made. Often you will see where the string connects on bracelets but this one is carefully hidden within a bead so it is seamless. Three of the beads on the bracelet are polished and the rest are not. I love the rawness of both of them. Not all the stones are perfectly round and some still have little sections missing out of them and they look like little geodes (see very right picture above). They glisten beside the matte of the outside of the stone to create beautiful little details.

They also have other options including a hemsa mala bracelet (with smokey and rose quartz, amethyst, white howlite and hematite), a letting go mala (with brown agate and fossils), a nourishment and comfort mala (with rose quartz and amazonite – one of my favs) and more! Prices range pending the stones.

Cost of the new beginnings malas: Necklace $60, Bracelet $20, to shop for the bracelet click here and for the necklace click here. 

Sacred Tea

Here’s what it looks like:

I love tea, and I love rooibos. When I was pregnant it totally saved me as I used to drink mainly black tea. Rooibos is safe to drink during pregnancy. I hesitated when I opened this tea because it says orange on it and I’m not the biggest orange fan, especially when it comes to teas, however, it is soft and subtle and so delicious. Its not overpowering in a, I will only drink this in the fall or winter way. I have been drinking it over the summer, even in the heat. It’s totally delicious. You can also make the tea and pour it over ice to make iced tea which is super refreshing! This tea can be found in most of the boxes offered or in their sacred tea kit which also includes a mug, a travel tumbler, a reusable tea bag and a key chain!

Cost: $35.00 for the sacred tea kit, boxes vary, to shop click here. 

Now onto the items specifically for surrogates...

Surrogate Pregnancy Planner

Here’s what it looks like:

This gift is specifically for surrogates. It’s a beautiful crafted planner that guides you through your pregnancy from appointments, to the size of your baby, to what essentials oils are great but more than that it connects a surrogate to their intended parents. It’s a great gift to give them after the surrogacy is completed and a great keepsake for both.

Cost: $14.99, to shop click here. 

Key Chain

Here’s what it looks like:

I always say, love your tribe and if you have chosen to become a surrogate, that is one hell of a tribe to be part of so you should wear it proudly. This adorable key chain is a lovely reminder that you are doing or did something amazing for someone else. Super affordable, lightweight and I love that its wood – another little reminder connecting you to the earth. They also have other items to help you show off your tribe!

Cost: $2.50, to shop click here. 

Again, here is the store if you want to see what else they have. I highly recommend heading over if you are looking for something for a pregnant loved one or if you want to treat yourself! 

Sacred Surrogacy

[sulla-slays-cronulla]

Rum Plum Pecan Bums

Yes, I am taking this recipe collecting and naming SUPER CEREALLY. Even though I forgot to add the oats. 

Behold, my nails did portend this confection. 

Dutiful note-taking simply faded away after first few minutes, so... whoops? 

Pastry Pecan Bums - Large bowl

60g roughly blended pecans ; 1/6 cup ground almonds

1/2 cup wholemeal flour ; 5/6 cup self-raising flour

2 tbsp brown sugar ; 3.5 tbsp good 100% cocoa 

some salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and Chinese five spice if you are too lazy to make a proper flavour. For shame. 

Mix properly, add 55g unsalted butter and roll through fingers until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs

1 cold, properly beaten egg with 1 teaspoon vanilla essence, 2 tablespoons very cold water, and for whatever reason this time, I also needed 4 tablespoons of skim milk. This was the only liquid dairy available at the moment, but by choice, I would have used some type of cream instead. 

Correct proportions if dough holds form, and sticks to itself instead of you. 

Roll out pastry and cut into circles. To fit the tin sides better, I rolled them flatter and wider after the cut out. 

Line the number of muffin cups that can fit into your tray with unsalted butter, so 12 for me (made some syruped cookies with the extra dough after). Press the pastry down gently and into the edges best that you can.

Blind baked at 200C for 8 minutes. 

Syrup - Prepare and heat-then-keep aside as you go along

350ml of a sugar free mixed tropical fruit juice into saucepan. 4 agar noodles, because I was hoping it would settle as a sort of jelly glaze? 

1.5 tbsp flower honey ; 1.5 tbsp maple syrup

at the end of the reduction, 2 tablespoons of dark rum. Toss into freezer once satisfied with reduction. 

Rum Plum Body

1 packet raisins. Didn’t have yellow, so used the red peasant ones. 4 somewhat finely chopped dried apricots. Into a cup with around 4 tablespoons - or as much as one may please - of dark rum. After the pecan bums are done toasting, just put this cup into the empty oven, the heat will aid absorption? I think. 

80g mix of mostly macadamias with some pecan nuts, roughly chopped. 

Slice up: 2 nectarines ; 2 red plums; 2 yellow plums; 5 black plums. Yes, that is an awful lot of plum. Plums. I did not count properly save the two lonely nectarines, and tossed in whatever fruities I bought on sale and/or found were a little bit overripe in the fridge. 

Thumb-sized chunk of unsalted butter into frying pan. Let it brown up a little, then added 1 tablespoon of maple syrup. Then perhaps 3 tablespoons of fruit juice before it could begin to harden. Once the bubbles become larger (my guess is this indicates the relative sugar concentration is increasing) add the thinly sliced plums. 

Add at least 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of blended star anise. 

Stir until it begins to dry out, may add a bit more of the juice if you like, then 2 tablespoons of wholemeal flour to thicken. Then the soaked assortment of raisin, apricot and rum. 

Transfer into bowl to cool very slightly, pour in the chopped nuts to toast very slightly on low heat and scoop up the residuals from the pan. Mix in with fruit then scoop into the tartlet cases. 

Baked these at 200C for 18 minutes. 

Now, realistically, I should have waited for the tartlets and syrup to cool before combining them. But I did not wanna. So they are now shiny and glazed, sooner and grander... yet perhaps slightly soggier. 

The cookies aren’t much, just added small amount of honey and milk to the leftover dough for 7 small cookies, baked at 180C for a little under ten minutes. Glazed their bottom halves with the syrup after, and if I cared, I would do a dark chocolate ganache line down the middle. But alas. SHAN’T is the cognitive elicitation of the day. 

Edit:

After these were kept in the fridge, best way to eat was a quick microwave blast for the centre, and a gentle toasting to crisp up the fruit tips and base. It toasts very well. I also ate each tart with a Cherry Brandy chocolate. The flavour is a delicious parallel... nearly melted the candies to pour on top of the rum plums, would have done it if I had one more rum plum to try it out on. 

In a professional world. And if I had the fruit pulp from the juice I used or a similar jam + gooey fruit bar (I’ve seen a highly appropriate mango-passionfruit one that’s sugar free): A shallow base (halfway up) of tropical cheesecake for these would be amazing. Maybe I‘ll attempt one day. 

[hello-delicious-tea]

Shredded Beef + BONUS Beef Stew!

I love to cook, but my deep, dark secret is: I only really enjoy cooking for other people. When it’s just me, I have a tendency to eat whatever food I can find that satisfies my basic nutritional needs, while working around the things that upset my stomach (dairy, pork, and onions, sadly...). This results in a lot of baby carrots and peanut butter. 

However, when beef roasts are on sale... shredded beef, then beef stew using broth from shredded beef. Easy, cheap, healthy, and open to a lot of variation based on your taste preferences.

Shredded Beef + BONUS Beef Stew

Add to your cheap thrift-store pressure cooker that someone abandoned after they got the InstaPot of their dreams:

1 beef roast, of whatever size is on sale

Beef or mushroom bouillon (I usually use mushroom because I bought a jar and it’s gone on forever - tastes fine)

2 bay leaves

1 T thyme

Cayenne pepper, ancho chili pepper, garlic salt, whatever else you think looks good - apply to roast heavily

Pour in like two cups of water. Close lid. Turn heat on high. When the pressure cooker looks exciting, turn it down to medium. Leave for 30-40 minutes. Turn off heat. Wait for pot to cool down.

At this point, you can either go ahead and make your beef stew or take your broth and pop it in a storage container to stick in the freezer for later. We’ll assume you’re making meals for the week.

Take:

Potatoes, two to three cups, cubed

Carrots, of similar volume, in bite-size chunks (if you’re low on spoons, they sell chopped carrots cheap in the freezer section)

1 package stew beef (I also buy this on sale and stick it in the freezer for when I have a beef roast available as well - they go on sale pretty regularly, and then you can have lots of meat for not very much money)

Mushrooms? Onions? Rutabaga? Turnips? Parnsips? Add your favorite fungi and durable root veggies - wait on the mushrooms, though, you’ll add them to the rest of the pot towards the end

Add to beef broth and put the lid back on. Cook about fifteen minutes, same process as before, then wait for it to cool down a bit, take the lid off and add the mushrooms, put it back on, cook for five more minutes or until beef is very tender. Stew is ready.

Meanwhile, now that your big hunk of beef is cool enough to handle, take two forks and shred it, and you have tortilla fillings or nacho toppings or dip makings or sandwich filling or w/e. 

I’m enjoying it quite a bit. It’s nice to get two different meals out of it easy, and I bet I could thicken the stew broth, add some Worcestershire sauce, and turn the stew into a shepherd’s pie if I wanted...

[hassanzohaib]

Why buy an online deep freezer?

With the storage of massive portions of food items, the Deep freezer maintains the constant temperature of zero ranges of Fahrenheit. Because the frozen meals need to no longer carry on the vicinity wherein the temperature is significant than 40 degrees Celsius. The question arises now that the fridge freezer is high-quality enough for storing frozen meals. Why can we need the buy an online deep freezer? The answer is that fridge is not with a massive amount of space and specific features for retaining proper temperature for frozen temperature.

What are the advantages of the buy an online Deep freezer?

The very critical aspect is it facilitates us to keep a massive variety of meal objects at a specified temperature. We should purchase the food object in bulk for our future motive. The buy online deep freezer doesn't break the meals taste and also reduces the quantity of food waste in our domestic.

Scientific advantage

A deep freezer not best allows to keep the food gadgets but also keeps medicines. Some drugs need to be stored at a proper temperature; otherwise, it ends in a few other negative results. So that buy online deep freezer allows us in all of the ways of storage objects without spoiling them.

Diverse capabilities

The buy online deep freezer has various functions like holding the precise temperature, including guide setting and automated settings. It offers some alarm or notification as soon as the device creates the malfunction. It calls for the minimal area to store big quantity meal gadgets.

Storing garden produce

In case you've had an excessive producing garden, you know that it can be impossible to maintain up with all the one's splendid fruits and veggies in the course of the busy harvest time. Having a buy online deep freezer buys you some time in dealing with your produce.

For instance, I presently have around a dozen gallon-sized freezer baggage full of blackberries that we picked ultimate summer. I make the majority into jam (however, I create masses of syrup too). However, I like to store them all to jam simultaneously, so the mess is consolidated sooner or later (and preferably in the fall while it's no longer so warm). However, when you consider that they're frozen, I can take my good antique time (and they're splendid for smoothies and cobbler when they're frozen)!

Shopping for Meat in Bulk

As one of the maximum pricey objects on your grocery list, stocking up on meat can keep the cash. Whether you're hoping to get fortunate with markdowns at your neighborhood butcher's counter, otherwise you buy meat in bulk, you need someplace to position that meat while you're waiting to apply it.

I do an aggregate of freezing meat cooked and raw. I commonly brown up half of the floor pork and divide it into portions I will use and then freeze the relaxation uncooked in average amounts. I'll cook dinner up and shred some of it and freeze the rest in regular quantities for my family or in freezer food.

Shopping much less often

I started out making once-a-month grocery shopping journeys while living very away from the metropolis. Having a buy online deep freezer makes as soon as-a-month shopping simple. I could stock up on milk that might be ultimate us all month by sticking a few gallons within the freezer. There are masses of different meals you may not understand that you may freeze. After you study all the foods that may freeze, you'll be able to stock up while you make your shopping journey, particularly if you discover a great deal.

Take benefit of clearances and sales.

I like to store at a reduction meals shop that sells meals near their expiration or "Quality through" date. Food fees drop when meals receive close to the end of their high. If you have freezer space, you could rate it huge while this occurs. Here's one example. However, I severely do the identical factor while ever finding a killer deal

on any freezable food that our family eats.

I like to make homemade yogurt because it saves lots of cash over keep-bought yogurt (plus, it's easy to make a gallon at a time). Nonetheless, after I find the man for a fantastic deal at Grocery Outlet, I seize all I will. I positioned them directly into the freezer, then pull them out separately to install college lunches. Freezing them places a preserve on the expiring process, so once I take them out, it's as if it has been the same day, I put them in the freezer. No longer best is the yogurt still correct. With the aid of lunch, it's far thawed but bloodless.

Bulk baking classes

I'm a cross-large-or-go-domestic type of female on the subject of baking. If I'm attempting to bake and make a large number in the kitchen, then I'm quadrupling recipes left and right. My circle of relatives loves self-made baked goods, so if I don't get them into the freezer, even six loaves of pumpkin bread will disappear in an afternoon or!

The freezer usage, along with bulk baking, permits me to keep bread, truffles, cookies, and granola bars for snacks and school lunches. Making homemade lunch snacks is an excellent way to save money.

A few times in 12 months, I will make pie crust dough in bulk, after which I freeze person dough balls. We'll have delicious pastries, pot pies, and quiches for the rest of the year with very minimal effort on my component.

Make-beforehand sandwiches

While packing lunches, my freezer saves me from having to make sandwiches every day, that's one of the matters that drives me bonkers approximately school time.

Among my husband and three faculty-elderly youngsters, I make at least six sandwiches an afternoon. If the toddler and I have sandwiches, that's two more!

One of my finest discoveries of the past decade is that you can freeze peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And they're tremendous! After our month-to-month grocery purchasing experience, I'm able to make something like eight loaves of sandwiches to go into the freezer. I go through numerous big jars of peanut butter and several jars of jamming all of a sudden. However, it's so gratifying not to make sandwiches for a while.

Why choose us?

If you are keen to buy an online deep freezer, then visit www.lahorecenter.com for the best freezers. These freezers are cost-effective and easy to manage.

Reference:https://lahorecentreblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/why-buy-online-deep-freezer.html

[wiym]

THE MINIMALIST FOOD BUDGET

Having a baby has brought a lot of change to how we budget and prepare food. These days we opt for quick, easy meal options that are balanced, varied and nutritious. Here’s how I feed our family with an EBF infant for around $100 (AUD) per week, below the current national average weekly spend for couples under 35 of $239.

EST. READING TIME: 4 minutes

SHOPPING OUR PANTRY

Every so often we restock non-perishable items, such as cans and reusable baking sheets, and other pantry staples such as flour and raw sugar.

Having an organised pantry helps with inventory so for all those nesting out there, this is the very thing to alphabetise at whatever ungodly hour you are biologically urged to do so.

Generally the things we have stashed in our pantry are:

Canned diced tomatoes

Pasta sauces

Stock; chicken, vegetable + beef

Olive and vegetable oil

Vinegar; white + red wine

Himalayan salt

Once we had this growing hoard of spaghetti  like I had shares in San Remo. I was on a baby brained feedback loop every time I went to the shops where I couldn’t remember whether or not I had bought spaghetti the last time I went to the shops. So now, I put all our dry pasta into clear airtight containers and Jack takes on the mental load of what pantry or fridge items are running low.

MEAL PLANNING

We pick five to seven dinner meals and two to three lunches depending on what we have going on for the week. And we stick to it, so that means no impulse buying or food wastage.

Breakfast is usually toast, oat clusters or yoghurt with fruit for me, with a coffee. Jack isn’t usually up in the morning for breakfast.

If it can be made into a lunch I will buy, make and cook extra. Things like slow cooker meals (curries, soups and stews etc.), burgers or crumbed chicken are easy to reheat the next day. Otherwise our lunches are usually sandwiches. I’m extremely lucky to have Jack home during the day as he starts work late in the evening so we sit down at lunch time and have a ham or salami salad sandwich or roll.

Neither of us are generally snackers, but we have a small stock of snacks like dried mango slices, nuts (not for me as I’m allergic), a bulk lolly bag and a biscuit tin. I’ll sometimes have carrots sticks and dip or a piece of fruit.

As an example, our dinners planned for this week are:

Penne pasta with new potatoes and green beans

Baked chicken fingers with tzatziki and salad

Steak with winter salad

Beef stroganoff with mushrooms

Bruschetta, spaghetti bolognese and roasted broccoli

(I will be posting some of these recipes this week on my IG @who.syourmummy)

The other two days we generally go out, get takeaway (and takeaway is fine in moderation) or eat leftovers.

WRITING A LIST

My own mum pathologically writes them, but the benefit of picking meals is I can just screenshot the recipes and take that with me as I am lazy about writing a shopping list.

If it’s a bigger food shop I will write a list so I don’t forget anything, due in part to baby brain (evidently it is permanent) or use the whiteboard organiser on our fridge.

Every second week is our larger shop. This week our food shopping looked like:

FRUIT AND VEGETABLES

A bunch of bananas

A box of pears and strawberries

Large bag mixed salad (⚠️ not for the pregnant and I re-wash the salad as I go)

Two baby cos which is then chopped and stored in a container in the fridge with a damp paper towel to last

One broccoli head

Sliced mushrooms

Bags of carrots, potatoes and green beans, then these won’t need to be bought the following week

Six roma or truss tomatoes

MEAT

Bulk chicken breast and the unused chicken goes in the freezer - tear apart packs are so convenient for this

Pork mince

Two porterhouse steaks

Diced chuck steak

DELI

Aldi bulk leg ham and salami

DAIRY

Plain Greek yoghurt

Tzatziki dip

Butter

Bulk cheddar slices (lasts 3-4 shops)

Oat milk for me and hi-lo for Jack

Feta block

Two chocolate bars as the fridge vs. pantry debate rages on and we are goblins for chocolate

PANTRY

Oat clusters

Strawberry jam

Flour

Stroganoff meal base

Dried mango slices

Two loaves of sliced light rye bread, then one goes in the freezer

A Turkish bread loaf

Corn chips

Salsa

THE TAKE AWAY

Some more tips I have are to shop the specials and buy quick sale items that can be frozen or eaten that night. I reuse the plastic bags the fruit and veggies come in as bin bags.

In the past I took reusable bags and bought loose produce, but in a pandemic with a young baby, my shopping needs to be grab and go.

With Oliver being exclusively breastfed, the priority is what can be made quickly and conveniently. I hate wasting food so we try to only buy what we will definitely eat.

While our meals are healthful, varied and nutritionally balanced, they aren’t rigid or laced in diet culture tropes. It helps us keep the shopping budget within our means while also tasting good.

Follow me on IG @who.syourmummy or click the IG icon at the top of the website for the recipes

[happy2bmyownboss]

I was looking back through my posts to see when our last update was and if you don’t include A Series of Unexpected Events, Part 2, and Part 3 then I believe it would’ve been Life Update: A Jacuzzi, A Boy’s Night out, And Why We Don’t ‘Do’ Halloween which seems like it was forever ago.

Monday

I know last week I posted 35+ Freezer Meals In One Day! where I did give a couple of updates like Ms. Bella’s birthday:

And then Nanny J also had a birthday where we made her a cute little gift out of items that we had:

A cute teddy bear made from a Norwex Body Cloth, some lotion samples, and a bracelet. In that post I also had some of our budding photographer’s shots… he really loves taking pictures of animals. If you haven’t checked out my Norwex site you should probably go ahead and do that NOW. Make sure to sign up for my newsletter because there are a TON of great sales coming up!

That night we had one of our freezer meals, Ham & Cheese Potato Bake. It was soo good! I got the top a little extra brown and that was Mr. Awesome’s favorite part. We had leftovers for lunch the next day and I had enough for my lunch the day after too! This one is definitely going on repeat for our menu!

The FULL MOON seems to make everything and everyone so crazy around here. I can’t even begin to tell you what happened. A couple of the kids were CRAZY and WILD and Momma was just about to pull her hair out! I do have a post coming up about Lunar Influence.

Tuesday

I don’t remember much of Tuesday except that I was busy trying to figure out where to put all of those freezer meals and I was fighting with the internet. I ended up on the phone with customer service and on chat for 5-6 hours that day BEFORE they finally agreed to send someone out.

The tech came out late in the evening and with the time change, it was getting DARK really fast. He didn’t see any problem at first and was about to give us his personal number so we could call him when it was acting up when it CRASHED again. He found so many errors he said he honestly didn’t know how we even had any internet service at all.

Since it was dark already he said he would come back the next day, if that was OK.

We had some fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans for dinner that night. Mr. Awesome had been complaining that he missed having fried foods so I made an exception. There were no LEFTOVERS!

Wednesday

We pulled out some of the  Baked Oatmeal Applesauce Muffins for breakfast. Everyone loved them but they suggested that we need to add some raisins to them the next time make them!

The tech returned and again he found numerous errors… more than he had ever anticipated. He was tracing the errors here and there when he finally decided to just start replacing lines.

It appears that part of the problem was because when the previous lines were installed a couple of years ago the original tech had not taken out or unhooked the old wiring. This causes a back feed and was messing with the signal… all I really know is that it is working much better now.

I have been so much more productive online this week and it feels good to actually be able to get a little work done… it was kind of funny trying to explain to the tech what I do and what I need my internet to do but he kinda seemed to understand. I have been AMAZED to see the increase in my blog traffic and Pinterest views since my productivity has INCREASED… CRAZY!

I also worked on getting all of the freezer meals put into the freezers as they had been in the refrigerators. I didn’t have quite enough room without doing some major reorganization so we ate one of them for dinner, Stuffed Shells.

I didn’t fix any sides but some buttered bread. We still had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. This one will be added to the repeating menu as well! Mr. Awesome just suggested that I add a little more cheese to the top… this was one of the meals where I was running short on cheese. I had planned to add more before baking but hadn’t been to the store again yet.

That’s one way to fix something that causing an issue… eat it!

Thursday

This past Thursday Mr. William had a dentist appointment. He was SUPER anxious because it was a new dentist and he often doesn’t do well with NEW things. I was lucky that Mr. Awesome was able to keep the other kiddos at home so I could FOCUS all of my attention on Mr. William.

He got a bit NERVOUS when they were doing the x-rays but he did fine. His appointment went well and he had NO CAVITIES! He does need to work on his brushing a little bit. We don’t use a ‘traditional toothpaste’ as one of the kids had some issues with Flouride a few years back and switched to this brand. My kids love the lemon flavor!

**This post does contain affiliate links to products and/or services that we use. If you happen to click through a link and make a purchase we may earn a teensy-weensy small commission (at NO EXTRA cost to you) if a purchase is made through these links. These links help to support our family, our blog, and our homeschooling mission. This means that we can keep bringing you great recipes, ideas, and tips for FREE! Click HERE for a full disclaimer.  –Thank you!

Mr. William and I also stopped at the bread store to stock up on a few items. The store was almost completely our of regular loaf bread so we ended up with a lot of wheat bread and just before we finished checking out they had found two loaves of white bread so I grabbed them… sorry folks! After that, we stopped by the post office to pick up a couple of packages. We had some school supplies and some Christmas gifts that had come in. I have probably finished 80-90% of our Christmas shopping although I can’t promise that I’ll be able to find it all if this house doesn’t get here soon!

When we returned home, I made lunch for everyone and sent the kids to their beds for a nap. Everyone has been a little under the weather which has made them super grouchy. This wasn’t the only reason though… we needed to fix the toilet. If the kids were down for naps it would make the job that much easier.

I went to town to grab the parts we needed and when I returned Mr. Awesome and I set to work. The hardest part was to get the bolts off as they were rusted. We ended up using a hacksaw to cut the bolts which was no easy task. Once that was completed we removed the toilet and began to check for the problem… if you follow me on Instagram you probably already know what I found:

Yep, one of the kiddos had indeed flushed part of a hanger down. I managed to fish it out with a coat hanger as it was caught in the bend of the toilet… that was not easy either. We did manage to get everything cleaned out and get the toilet reinstalled well before naptime was over and now we have working toilet again.

The kids were a little worried as they had heard me mention to Mr. Awesome that we needed to clean out the outhouse and get it back in working order… lol. Mr. Awesome did hurt his back during this project so please pray for him!

The bathroom still needs some major work but it will need to wait until we can get moved as we just can’t go without a toilet for the time we need to renovate the bathroom. 

That evening Mr. Awesome surprised me by taking me out to dinner at one of our favorite places, Ballyhoo Grill. We usually just order a few appetizers as our meal because they are so good!

After dinner, we went to one of my favorite stores, Books A Million, and found quite a few interesting books. We also went to Walmart to pick up a few things and then we headed home. While we were out we did see a few things that might make good Christmas gifts as well.

I later found out that something else had been planned for that night but Mr. Awesome’s injury kept him from doing it.

The kids had meatball sandwiches with potato chips for dinner while they were at home with the babysitter. I don’t believe there were any leftovers that night either!

Friday

On Friday my son-in-law graduated from his training and that means he and my daughter will be relocating to Kansas soon! I’m trying not to cry as I think about it. I know we have to let go of them at some point but it never seems to be the right time when it happens… you always seem to want to hang on to them just a little bit more.

This was one of my motivations for posting as many new recipes to the blog as I have. My daughter is ALWAYS asking for recipes and it is so much easier to just make a copy and give it to her but she won’t be that close anymore. Now she can check the blog and print it out… something else I’ve been working on as well… and if she can’t find it then she can let me know what she needs and I’ll get it to her. I‘ll probably also share them on the blog as well.

Here are a few of the recipes I’ve posted recently:

Peanut Butter Cookies

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Watergate Salad

Crockpot Pumpkin Butter

No-Bake Cheesecake with Flavor Variations

One thing that I’ve found, as I’ve been updating the recipes to include a printable link, is that some of the links were not working! I don’t really know how many of them are like that on my blog, and I probably never will know for sure, but that is so FRUSTRATING. If you ever happen to find a broken link please let me know in the comments and I’ll work on getting it fixed ASAP!

We also had a square dance that night. We had a babysitter watch the kiddos as they were still a bit under the weather.

I knew it was going to be a busy day so I had planned ahead and pulled out another freezer meal, Beef Stroganoff. I made some green beans and rolls to go with it.  Apparently, everyone really enjoyed it as there wasn’t much left when we got home and all the rolls were gone. I think there may be enough for two or three lunches left.

We had been expecting to see some dirt for the house come this week but so far NOTHING has appeared. The weather has been a bit NASTY as well so maybe that had a part to play in it?

Saturday

We had planned to go to a big dance on Saturday but some other things came up. Mr. Awesome had to go out of town that morning so I decided to help with a local vendor event, kids in tow, and I had a great time. I did have a little trouble getting everyone dressed that morning though:

We ate some of the loaded breakfast biscuits that morning. They were a hit with all but one of the kids. He ate a banana instead and everyone was happy. We also took some of our PB&Js from the freezer to carry with us for lunch.

I am constantly gathering new ideas for when I can venture out on my own. I really enjoy educating people about Norwex and its mission. I really don’t mind if they don’t buy our products as long as they are learning a little bit about reducing chemicals to improve the quality of their lives and the lives of their family members!

Was taking the kids a good idea? Ehhh… the jury is still out on that one. Some of the kids did really well, one of them was super grumpy, and another was just a MESS. The ones who did really well kept themselves occupied under the table… they pretended to be on a picnic. They all enjoyed looking around the flea market and they got to take their picture with SPONGEBOB!

I also saw some really cute things that I wanted to get but I didn’t… these little snowmen were adorable though:

I completely missed the bears… I might’ve gotten them if I had seen them!

We had still planned on going to the dance that evening but I really wasn’t feeling well and the kids were SUPER GRUMPY! Mr. Awesome got home later than expected and he also wasn’t feeling well so we just decided to stay home because we knew that we had a big day planned for Sunday.

That night we had a simple meal of sweet and sour meatballs with some macaroni and cheese. There are a few leftovers in the fridge… between the beef stroganoff and meatballs I should have lunch covered for today!

Sunday

Oh man, I woke up feeling MISERABLE. The dog wouldn’t be QUIET and was whining so bad because she doesn’t like to ‘sleep in’. Then it was the kids and all Momma wanted to was SLEEP!

I gave up on my plan and took Ms. Comet for a walk. The good thing about it being so cold is that she gets her business finished quickly. Then I set to work on making some Scrambled Eggs, Cheesy Grits, and toast. I just had a cup of Dandy Morning Coffee and a couple of Ibuprofen.

Shortly after sitting for a while our doorbell rang… guess who it was?

It was big sister, Ana, and her husband, Cody! We had plans to visit the MOSH as one last family outing before they leave. This month they had an astronaut exhibit which the kids really enjoyed. We also got there just in time for an animal talk and everyone got to pet a bearded lizard. Here is a quick slideshow of some of the things that we saw and did:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After the MOSH we went to visit a couple of my sisters… that’s where things went a little crazy. My one sister lives in a gated subdivision so it took us a minute to get in. When we got to her house she wasn’t there. She called me and ended up having me check her windows to see if any were open… well, I found one that was cracked open a tad and she told me to climb in!

She assured me that it was going to be OK even though I was afraid I’d set off an alarm and be swarmed with cops. After discussing all of the possible outcomes I decided, I should go ahead and just do it as it was pretty cold outside. When I was midway through the window one of my daughters came around the corner… yeah, probably not the best parenting moment for your kid to watch you breaking into a house! When I told big sis Olivia what I had done she didn’t believe me… lol.

I did get inside and unlocked the door, no cops came, and we ended up having a pretty good time. The kids love playing with their cousins and us sisters love running our mouths and catching up. We even added another sister through video chat… lol.

We had a dinner of sauteed veggies, baked spaghetti squash with alfredo sauce, baked chicken breast, and some garlic bread. While it wasn’t a winner with everyone it was pretty good and it was different. I will be trying spaghetti squash again here soon. I think if I put my special spaghetti sauce with it we will get a different reaction.

We had a late night last night and everyone was ready to get home and go to bed. As I am finishing this the kids are still sleeping. I’m feeling a bit under the weather today as I finally gave up fighting this cold last night. I spent the night sitting up in a recliner because that was the only way I could get comfortable and still breathe. As much as I’d love to sit around and jaw with you a bit more, I really think I want to take my hot coffee and snuggle with a blanket for a bit!

I hope you all have a blessed week!

Life Update: A Full Moon, Spongebob, and A B&E (with permission) I was looking back through my posts to see when our last update was and if you don't include…

[reciperesolutions]

Grilled BBQ Pork Loin - delish!! In an effort to clear out some of our freezer (I am really great about preserving foods in the freezer but nowhere near as great about eating them), I pulled out a beautiful double pack of 1 lb pork loins and called up some friends. My usual go-to is sous vide for pork BUT the supermarket had an insane sale on Sweet Baby Ray’s sauces (buy 2 get 3 FREE) so barbecuing it was! I’ve also got a great, smoky spice mix on hand now that I picked up again after this recipe, so I figured I’d just go all in with this dish.

Though I like to grill, I don’t actually do a lot of bbq persay (that is, I rarely use bbq sauce, which I feel like is the defining characteristic...not sure on that as a technicality, though). Didn’t take long to find a REALLY highly rated and incredibly simple recipe. Used a smoky BBQ sauce to complement the hickory smoked rub, and I ignored all of the spices they recommended in the recipe (just rubbed some XVOO then the spice mix all around).

This recipe calls for grilling on indirect heat (so basically, just not directly over the open flame). My little gas grill is small but has a partial upper grate that was just the right size for a loin, so I put one up there and the other on the right side of the grill but only turned on the left burners. Since the recipe calls for indirect heat and this is a first for me, I was curious how each would turn out: I definitely liked the one on the right burner more. Per the timing in the recipe, it cooked to about 145 and the one up top cooked (in the same time) to about 153 or so. Both were good but in general I prefer the 140s to 150s temperature. Either way, extra thin slicing was the way to go!

For the 2 lbs total, I also made a pound of egg noodles but underestimated how much spice to add (a tablespoon probably would have been good). That was simple enough: since I wouldn’t be recuperating any juices from the grill, I just threw some butter into a pan on low then added the spices, which cooked them just enough. Topped ’em with a little parm and they were good (just needed more of that spice!). Definitely great with some veggies, too (which were provided care of our company!) for a great balanced meal.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/14726/grilled-pork-tenderloin/

[sawcolor91-blog]

The Golden Age of Vegan Ice Cream Is Here

Micah Camden didn’t want to give up ice cream. The Portland, Oregon, chef is known around town for serving quick comfort foods at restaurants like burger drive-thru Super Deluxe and Boxer Ramen, and he was a co-founder of Blue Star Donuts. But, in recent years, Camden has found that he can’t eat as much of certain foods, including dairy. It’s not that he has a diagnosed food allergy, but some products give him trouble. “I’m not gluten intolerant. I’m glutton intolerant. It literally is something that affects me,” he says. And so for his next venture, Camden will make ice cream he — and just about anyone else — can eat with abandon. Little Bean, as he’s calling it, is dairy-free, nut-free, gluten-free chickpea ice cream.

Alternatives to dairy abound. Hip coffee shops now regularly stock nut milk, oat milk, and even hemp milk, and when it comes to frozen desserts, vegans and the lactose intolerant have never had more options. Chickpeas, though, might be a first.

Camden hit upon his recipe for chickpea ice cream accidentally. He started out making chickpea tofu. “I need to eat healthy. I like tofu, but I don’t like soy tofu, and I’m like, ‘What else can you do?’” he recounts. Camden then made chickpea milk, using the same process one would use for homemade soy milk. He put the result in a household ice cream maker and was pleasantly surprised. “Even in its rudimentary form it was really, really good, and it showed an amazing amount of promise,” he says.

Little Bean’s chickpea ice cream solves for a few of Camden’s issues with typical milk alternatives. Unlike coconut milk, chickpeas have a subtle flavor and are virtually free of saturated fats. Camden calls chickpeas a “drought crop,” meaning they don’t need as much water to thrive as a crop like almonds. Plus, he can feel good about buying them on a large scale, whereas he says relying on soy would most likely force him to support Monsanto, whose genetically modified soybeans have historically made up a large part of the soybean market. And for what he has planned, Camden will need a lot of chickpeas.

The Little Bean cart, which doled out scoops to Portlanders over the summer, will be joined by a truck and scoop shop this winter. The shop doubles as a bakery; it makes vegan, gluten-free ice cream cones and baked goods with the parts of chickpeas leftover from processing chickpea milk. He isn’t looking to be another Salt & Straw, the Portland-born scoop shop that’s expanded all over the West Coast. Instead, he hopes to see Little Bean pints in grocery stores across the country. “Crap commercial ice cream has cultivated my generation, but [the next generation is] going to be craving healthier ice cream,” he says.

Already, there’s a wealth of options for dairy-free ice cream in the freezer aisle to meet consumer demand. According to Nielsen, retail sales of nondairy ice cream increased by nearly 50 percent between 2016 and 2017, and in 2018 London-based market research company Technavio predicted that the global vegan ice cream market would continue to grow. Even Häagen-Dazs released a line of nondairy ice cream in 2017. But the biggest name in prestige vegan ice cream might be Van Leeuwen, which puts the word “vegan” right on its pints. The company launched 10 years ago with a New York City ice cream truck. The brand prided itself on flavors made with the highest-quality ingredients and a simple base of milk and cream, cane sugar, and egg yolks.

Four years after the brand’s launch, and two years after the opening the first Van Leeuwen scoop shop, it started turning out its first nondairy flavors. The initial goal was to please lactose-intolerant ice cream lovers, but vegan customers soon followed. “When we put out our first two vegan flavors, which were vegan chocolate and vegan vanilla, they exploded,” says co-founder Ben Van Leeuwen. “It blew up, partially because no one had ever eaten vegan ice cream made with extraordinary ingredients.”

Van Leeuwen treats its nondairy ice creams with as much care as its other flavors. Vegan options are available at every Van Leeuwen scoop shop (complete with house-made vegan toppings, like coconut whipped cream), and the company offers 10 different vegan pint flavors, to the classic line’s 16. “[One reason] we make the best vegan ice cream I’ve ever had anywhere in the world is because most of the vegan ice cream makers are only vegan ice cream makers, so they don’t have dairy ice cream as a standard, which is really, really good to go off of when you’re making vegan ice cream,” he says. The other reason: “We just spend a ton of money on extraordinary ingredients.”

Van Leeuwen puts intense focus on the base: a combination of (expensive) coconut milk, cashew milk, and cocoa butter. Having all three of these base ingredients (in varying ratios depending on the flavor) is essential for mimicking the texture of real ice cream: Coconut lends it creaminess, while cashews provide a chewy mouthfeel, and cocoa butter emulates butter fat, an essential ice cream component (in the U.S., real ice cream must contain at least 10 percent butter fat).

Cashew and coconut are now common replacements for the cream in ice cream. Virtuous Pie, a Vancouver-based vegan pizza and ice cream chain that expanded to Portland, Oregon, in 2017, also uses a cashew-coconut blend. In grocery-store pints, almond milk and soy are also frequent dairy substitutes. But increasingly, chefs are trying out new ingredients to satisfy nondairy dairy cravings.

New York City vegetarian restaurant Superiority Burger — helmed by acclaimed pastry chef and gelato star Brooks Headley — recently advertised a vegan polenta soft serve made without any alternative milks. Goldie, chef Michael Solomonov’s Philadelphia falafel shop, has served a vegan tehina shake to satisfy customers’ ice cream cravings since the restaurant opened in 2017. Executive chef Caitlin McMillan, a 2018 Eater Young Gun, says a tehina shake made sense at Goldie for a few different reasons. In a restaurant conceived as a vegan alternative to a burger joint, it complements the other items on the concise menu. “A lot of the burger places, they do milkshake, fries, and burgers, and that’s it,” McMillan explains. Goldie offers just falafel, fries, salad, and shakes: “[We’re] just keeping it super simple and trying to please everyone, but doing it vegan.”

Because tehina is used prominently at Solomonov’s Israeli restaurant Zahav, there was never really a question about what would make up the base of the shake. Happily, the ingredient makes for a satisfying frozen dessert when paired with sugar, nut milk, and flavored syrup. “It has a lot of fats and solids and creates this creamy effect,” McMillan says. She adds, “I think that it’s an alternative way — and a cool way and a new way — to incorporate that oily, nutty flavor.”

In Portland, Camden believes chickpeas will revolutionize vegan ice cream and change the way people eat. “The nondairy, healthier, local, environmentally conscious, quality products, they’re actually shooting up,” he says. “It really is the future of food — having something that isn’t kicking off huge emissions.” And as more people cut back on dairy, whether due to increased environmental consciousness or lactose intolerance, they’ll have options suited to their particular dietary restrictions and tastes. At Little Bean, they’ll find scoops with a light, creamy texture, supporting bold flavors, like barrel-aged vanilla, matcha mint, and strawberry Sichuan — no nuts, no gluten, no dairy, no soy. “I believe a lot of people need something like this,” Camden says.

Monica Burton is Eater’s associate restaurant editor. Paul Wagtouicz is a photographer based in Portland, Oregon.

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2018/11/13/18080598/vegan-ice-cream-chickpea-coconut-little-bean-van-leeuwen