02-07-2014

Food Lion Frugal Cook-Off

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UPDATE: I just found out that the cook-off is not open to the public due to space of the venue. So please just cheer me on virtually instead!

For the last month I have felt my world spinning faster than I would like and while I yearn for less matter to fill my brain, I realize that sometimes there are simply busy seasons in our lives.

Between a bathroom remodeling project that we are DIYing, launching a small business (yay! more details coming soon), and redesigning this blog (yay, again!) I feel that my somewhat orderly life is stretching me to the max. Life is a bit chaotic in its design but I try to keep things simple and focus on domestic and mom duties as my priorities. So these extra-curricular projects are throwing me for a loop.

What’s really kept me grounded though has been waking up around 5ish to have quiet time with Christ. I treasure those minutes, that hour, before my children wake. Time to have a mug of hot tea, envelope myself in scripture, and journal my prayers to Him. My time with Him renews me, encourages me, and reminds me to seek His guidance throughout the day.

So what’s a girl to do when a friend & fellow blogger sends her an email about a food cook-off? And not just any food cook-off but a FRUGAL food cook-off! She excitedly requests to be included! And then she prays about it. And then she feels bad that she didn’t seek God’s guidance first to see if she should be signing up. And then she realizes that, in all things, God can bring goodness…bring Him glory. So she tries to remind herself that God gave her passions and enthusiasms in life for a reason. It’s a really nice gift when you’re given the opportunity to do something you love…so perhaps she should just cherish this fun & exciting event!

So to the point of this post….

I am thrilled to be one of the contestants in Charleston’s Food Lion Frugal Cook-Off on 19 February. As any close friend of mine knows, I love food more than almost anything. Really. I have to work really hard on having conversations that do not revolve around food. And, I LOVE TO SAVE $. My favorite conversations sans food include me saying…”guess how much I just saved!” So this cook-off should be really neat. And challenging. And scary. I mean, do I really know how to cook good food without an arsenal of spices at the ready? What do I do if they hand me a pork tenderloin? (I don’t know that I’ve ever made a tender tenderloin…ever…not once!)

Oh, and did I mention that just by participating I will get a $100 gift certificate to share with one of you! And if I win, then the gift certificate becomes $250!

I’ll be back in touch after the event to let you know how it goes!

Jess

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01-23-2014

Stretching 1lb of meat over 3 meals

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Like most people, I am continually amazed at the cost of feeding my family. As the kids grow they seem to constantly be eating and I feel like I live at the grocery store.

Last week I was ecstatic when I was able to stretch 1 lb of stew meat over 2 dinners and 1 lunch for 2 adults & 2 kids.  Our first dinner was nachos, our lunch was tacos, and our second dinner was quesadillas served with Mexican potatoes. The key to doing this is to make your vegetables and starch be the featured ingredients instead of the meat. By loading the nachos and quesadillas with bell peppers, onions, lettuce, cheese, and avocado it was really easy to not use as much meat. 

For comparison purposes, I cooked another pound of stew meat this week but instead of stretching it, I made a typical meat, starch, and veggie meal. When I did that there was only enough meat for 1 meal.

By cooking the stew meat in a crockpot, it was also super simple to make. I tossed the meat with Mexican spices, drizzed on some honey, and then when the meat was tender I added in a can of diced tomatoes with peppers to give it a little kick.

If you are thinking your children don’t want to eat spicy food then, cook the meat with the spicy spices but before adding the tomatoes, pull out the meat for your children and rinse very well with water. My kids refuse to eat anything that isn’t plain tasting but they loved this meat after the spices had been rinsed off. If you try to cook the meat without the seasoning spices, the meat won’t taste anywhere near the same as having cooked for hours with spices rubbed on them initially.

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CrockPot Mexican Stew Meat

1 lb of stew meat
2 tsp each:
-dried oregano
-dried cilantro
-adobo seasoning
-chili powder
-garlic powder
-ground cumin
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup honey
1 15.5 oz can of diced tomatoes with chili’s

Toss stew meat with all herbs, spices, and honey. Place in crock pot and cook on low for 4-6 hours. Test meat at 4 hours to determine how much more time is needed to avoid it drying out. Once meat is tender, add diced tomatoes and cook for another 30 minutes, until mixture is warmed through.

*These spices are all optional/customizable. If you don’t like one of them or don’t have something on hand, such as adobo seasoning, don’t worry about it. This is a very make as you like recipe.

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Enjoy!

Jessica

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10-16-2013

A Canning Party

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Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes…Is there anything as glorious as homegrown tomatoes?

Back in August when the tomato vines were so heavily laden with ripening fruit I hosted a canning party. It was fun, glorious, and wonderful. And I passed on canning knowledge to 3 more people. I think my grandma’s would have been proud.

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I enjoy the process of canning and producing a tangible something. There is nothing like making spaghetti sauce, taco dip, or some shrimp scampi with your very own canned tomatoes. And I want to pass this enjoyment on to others. I want people to realize that canning and preserving isn’t as hard as you think it is. That it IS doable.

Take Lindsey (on the right) for example…I taught her how to pickle okra last summer and then last month she had a party and showed her daughter’s teacher how to pickle okra. I think that is so cool! We have to spread the wealth of knowledge that we have in our heads. My grandmothers, mom, sister-in-law…they shared it with me and now I’m simply passing it on.

SO GO CAN!!! And if you ever have a canning question or just need canning encouragement…let me know. I’m here to help.

Love,

Jessica

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06-04-2013

A New Parenting High

I know, I know…I haven’t posted in 6+ months and here I am this am with 2 posts!!!

I guess since many people consider me a ‘foodie’, I often hear comments like…”your kids must eat so well” or “wow, how do you get your kids to eat their veggies?” Well lets be honest…

This am my 3 year old started the morning with icecream (couldn’t take those strawberry crumb pics and not share some of the goodness) and then we moved on to the next best nutritious food possible for breakfast …. pizza! Why not? And, I didn’t just give them leftover pizza. I actually baked them a pizza for breakfast.

How’s that for an accomplished mom? At least they really enjoyed it!!

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Happy Tuesday!

Jess

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06-04-2013

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb

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Hello! I know its been forever since I’ve posted. And again, my reason is time well spent with the kids. They are now 3 & 5 and so entertaining, endearing, and full of life. We went strawberry picking a few weeks ago and this recipe was a result.

The filling’s thick and gooey center has bites of sweetness and tartness and then you bite into the crumb and get the crunch of walnuts and a surprising hint of ginger that lingers softly. Be sure to make this when you are able to feed a crowd. Otherwise, its you & the pie and trust me, you aren’t going to be throwing it out. So for your summer ready beach body, I advise only making this when there are lots of people to consume it!

I suggest using spelt flour as it seems to be a suitable flour for those of us with wheat allergies but not celiac disease. If you need to avoid gluten all together, I would suggest a sorghum based gf flour mix. And if you don’t have stomach issues (lucky you!) then all-purpose flour would work fine here.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb

10 servings

Crumb Topping
1 c GF oats
3/4 c white spelt flour
2/3 c white sugar
1/2 c chopped walnuts
6 tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2″ chunks
1 oz square crystalized candied ginger, finely chopped
large pinch of salt

Filling
3 c quartered strawberries
1 lb rhubarb, chopped into 1″ pieces
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
3 tbsp minute tapioca pearls
2 tbsp triple sec
smigen salt
1 tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut in tiny pieces

Crumb Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly butter a 9″ glass pie pan.

Combine flour, sugar and salt in medium bowl. Using fingers to incorporate, add in butter until it is crumbly. Mix in remaining ingredients. Chill in fridge as you prepare filling.

Filling Instructions

In large bowl mix together all filling ingredients except for butter. Toss ingredients well and allow to sit for ten minutes.

Place filling ingredients in buttered pie pan, then dot the top of filling with the tiny cubed pieces of butter. Next, pour chilled crumb topping all over pie filling.

Bake in preheated oven for 45-50 minutes until bubbling and golden brown on top.

NOTES: The butter, both in topping and filling, needs to stay chilled in fridge until added to recipe. Orange juice should be a good non-alcoholic replacement for triple sec. The oven broiler may be needed to reach golden brown all over. Don’t forget to watch broiler closely so it doesn’t burn!

Enjoi with some vanilla icecream!

Jess

p.s…I now have a huge appreciation for food stylist and photographers. Producing a good photo from a crumbling pie with melting icecream is NOT an easy feat!

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11-06-2012

Take your child to vote today

Hello long lost friends….I really am out here in this world. I’ve just been taking a sabbatical from blogging to spend more time with the kids. And its been nice. But I do miss blogging and my head is often thinking “Oh, that would be a cool blog post”…

So today is the day. YAY!!!

Or actually, tomorrow is the day. You see, tonight while we are sleeping in sweet slumber a magical fairy will descend upon our twisting roads and picks up ALL those pesky VOTE FOR ME signs.

Obviously, I’m in la la land. But if you are feeling in the mood to remove a sign or two or even more, and you live in the Lowcountry, you can actually receive money to an awesome local restaurant….Triangle Char & Bar. How cool is this….for each political sign you bring in for recycling, they give you a $1 credit to be used there.

I’m not a very political person and lately have been questioning if voting even matters. Who knows?  But it is a really neat experience to share with my school age child and I do firmly believe that some votes really do matter…like your school board vote or if you live in California, voting for GMO labeling.

So get out there and exercise your right to vote today! And if it isn’t too much of a challenge, take your child with you so they can learn about the democratic process. And if you live in California….PLEASE vote for GMO labeling!

Have a great day!
Jess

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09-06-2012

Wheat, oh wheat, what have you done to me?

Good morning! I am writing this at 6:07am. Wow, such a bright start to the morning. Many of you may be on the computer this early on a regular basis, but trust me….I am not. But my little Stella likes to wake at 5:45 just about every morning. Normally, I fight this for about 30 minutes. But this morning, I just went ahead and got up at the crack of dawn. If anyone has some magic tricks up their sleeves of how to get her to sleep in, I’d love to know!

But I digress, already! Kiddos’ wake up times is not what I am trying to write about.

So if you’ve known me for longer than 5 minutes there is a very good chance that you’ve heard about my “delicate stomach” and if you are unfortunately a close friend or a family member, then you’ve probably been tortured by listening to me try to diagnose my problem myself. And if you’re one of my sisters or my husband…well, let’s just say they are probably beyond THRILLED that I’ve finally found what is making my stomach not a very happy camper.

It’s wheat ya’ll. Or to actually be much more specific, it’s gluten that is found in wheat, barley, and rye. So drumroll here….I am going Gluten Free!

I’ve been GF for a week now (how awesome is it, that we gluten intolerance people have a cool abbreviation to stick to our name!) and I’ve already seen a big improvement, and I’m hoping I will continue to see more improvements…like maybe the mild acne that drives me crazy will clear up too?

Now, to why I thought YOU wanted to know all about my stomach issues… I am hoping that there are some readers out there who can help point me in the direction of tried & true, trusted & knowledgeable books, blogs, and cookbooks that’ll help me get creative when cooking & baking.

I’ve already checked a gozillan GF cookbooks out at the library, THANK GOD for libraries. And I’ve been looking at quite a few blogs. But I’m not kidding myself…I’m not the first person out there with this….so I know there are plenty of you who know which books are the most helpful and which blogs have the best tasting GF recipes.

Thanks for taking the time to help a ‘new to GF’ girl out! I really appreciate it!!!

Jess

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09-04-2012

Au revoir summer 2012

Today’s the first day of pre-school and our oldest one, Dale Esau, is starting 4K!

And, I’ve learned some VERY shocking news…Next year, we’ll have to be at elementary school by 7:25AM! Are you serious? I guess that means my half sleeping on the couch from 6:30-8:30ishhh is probably not going to be happening so much in 2013. Therefore, I need to really appreciate these lazy morning hours, while I have ’em!

This summer we’ve had our share of lazy morning (okay, okay….all day) hours! We’ve been busy enjoying all the things summer brings… like popsicles, icecream, kettle corn at the farmer’s market, jaunts to the beach and pool, and playing tourists in our town.

So I wanted to share some photos with ya’ll of what we’ve been up to. I know I’ve posted extremely little and I’ve missed it. But there was just so much fun to be had with the computer turned off, that sometimes it was too hard to turn the computer on. This business of summer is winding down with our re-entrance into school and schedules, so here’s to hoping I’ll be blogging more often.

Sharing…is there anything more precious between siblings?

Road trip enthusiasm!

Inspecting dirt for worms, seriously…what we spent every single day doing this summer!

Catching fish together…the crazy outfit on DE is a make-shift trash bag poncho!

I’ve pickled probably 16 pints of okra so far and am hoping to put some more up this week. I LOVE pickled okra!

Berry Licious Lime Yogurt Popsicles

For the first time ever, I was able to can tomatoes from our garden!

Dale Esau planted these, unbeknownst to me, when I was working on another part of the garden. It was a pretty cool surprise to see them sprout and flourish. Since he planted them, they were his favorite veggie to eat all summer!

Chocolate Toffee Cupcakes for my birthday!!!

I cannot wait!!! to share with ya’ll this granola bar recipe. It is so delish, so addictive, and so gluten free!!!

Is there anything else that says summer better?

I hope you & yours had a fantastic summer!!! Here’s to being thankful for football season, falling leaves, pumpkins, and relishing this last year of sleepy mornings on the couch!

Love,

Jess

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07-09-2012

Tomato, Caramelized Onions, and Gorgonzola Pie

Happy (late!) 4th of July!! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and indulged in lots of food, laughter, and relaxation. Fisherman was on vacation and we had a wonderful Staycation. I feel like it was Christmas in July considering the copious amounts of food I ate over the last week.

So what have I been eating??? I’m so glad you asked! Fresh mahi mahi, roasted corn salad, pasta salad, BBQ, hmmmm….there isn’t a lot I haven’t consumed this past week. But my favorite dish was a Tomato Gorgonzola Pie that I adapted from a Gourmet Magazine Cookbook.

I probably shouldn’t admit this, since I am so proud to be Southern, but up until I made this tomato pie, I had never eaten one in my life. Crazy, isn’t it! And there’s no holding me back now.

The best part was that it took me no more than 45 minutes, start to finish. That includes the lets find where I hid the gorogonzola in the fridge and let me go pick some tomatoes and get side tracked into watering the garden. Sorry, this may be a long blog post….its just been a while since I’ve posted and I have all these thoughts I want to share with ya’ll, but I get distracted with kids and life and blah blah, okay back to the pie…

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So to start, you’ll need a pie crust, Gorgonzola cheese, onions, and tomatoes….pretty simple, right!

After placing crust into your pie pan, place pie weights…or dry beans…onto the pie with aluminum foil to keep the middle of the pie from rising while you pre-bake the crust. You need to bake the crust beforehand since you only put it under a broiler once the ingredients are added.

Add some olive oil and your onions into a heavy pan and start the caramelizing process. I just LOOOVE caramelized onions! Even Fisherman loves & appreciates them and he isn’t the biggest foodie on the block.

Also, don’t be afraid to try caramelizing red onions. I did half white & half red the second time I made this and they tasted great. (And yes, I did make & eat this pie TWICE in the past week! Shows you how good it is!)

Good advice for caramelizing onions is to turn your back to them. Find something else to do, you don’t need to stir constantly, just every few minutes.

Now see all those brown bits of good onion residue? Scrape those bad boys up and stir in with the onions. They have all sorts of good flavor! And yep, this picture was from Pie #1 when I only used white onions.

Your piecrust should now be finished baking, so place caramelized onions in first…

…then your cheese, tomato, cheese layers…

…broil for a few minutes until cheese slightly browns, garnish with fresh basil and…

…Voila…Eat that pie up!!!

I hope you like as much as I did!!!

Jessica

Tomato, Caramelized Onions, and Gorgonzola Pie

Ingredients
1 9″ prepared pie crust
2 large onions (yellow or red), very thinly sliced
1 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
5 medium sized ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced
Handful of fresh basil for garnishing

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Place pie crust into a glass pie pan. Line pie pan with aluminum foil and fill with pie weights/dried beans/or raw rice. Bake approximately 20 minutes until pasty is pale golden brown around rim. Remove weights and bake another 8 minutes until golden brown all over. If edge of crust looks to dark, place tin foil around the edges for remaining bake time.

While crust is baking, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat and cook onions for approximately 20-25 minutes until they are caramelized in color. Sprinkle the onions with kosher salt a few times while cooking and stir every few minutes. As the onions begin to soften and brown, there will be residue at the bottom of the pan; stir these brown goodie bits into the onions.

Preheat oven broiler.

Spread caramelized onions over bottom of pie shell and top with 3/4 cup of the cheese. Arrange tomatoes, slightly overlapping, in circles over the cheese. Sprinkle tomatoes with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup of cheese over the tomatoes and drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil over the top.

Broil the pie until the cheese slightly browns, approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Garnish with fresh basil if desired.

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04-30-2012

Do you CSA? Part 2

In case you missed my post, Do you CSA, click here, so the following will make more sense!

So I’ve finally made my decision…shopping at the Farmer’s Market from a plethora of vendors is just too much fun to pass up!

I know I could still buy from other vendors even if I have a CSA, but I’m on a budget here. If I spend my $20 with one farmer, then I’ll not have any MULA for the golden beets from Owl’s Nest or no fresh berries from Maple Ridge Farms. And it’s so much fun, each week, to speak with the different farmers, buy some baby crookedneck squash here and a fresh off the vine tomato there. (No, its not tomato season here at all, I am just anxiously awaiting the day!)

Thank you to EVERYONE that shared your comments, your thoughts, and feedback. I thought everyone would push me to the CSA so it was great to see all the varied opinions.

I’ve been working on recipes a lot lately so hopefully I can get some up soon. Think…swiss chard and ground pork stew, chicken & pork bolognese, quiche, pesto….hmmm…I love me some food.

Have a great day!

Jessica

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