Family Feasts for $75 a Week

I love passing along great finds to my readers.  I, not too long ago, found a cookbook that I think you might find worth investigating.  I love cookbooks and I have a lot of them on my shelves.  I adore digging through them and finding recipes to match what I have in my cupboard - especially now that I'm working on my Pantry Challenge.  But rarely have I found a cookbook in which I would cook almost every recipe that's in it... until now!

Family Feasts for $75 a Week has become my new "go-to" book!

This book is full of recipes that are simple and use ingredients that can be found in every grocery store.  The writer, Mary Ostyn, gives tons of tips that she uses for her meals to substitute, stretch, make the meal vegetarian - or not vegetarian, and much more.  

Here's an excerpt from the back cover:

In Family Feasts for $75 a Week you'll find:

~Tips on Achieving your spending goals

~Shopping lists, charts, and quizzes to help you plan and save money and time

~Advice n how to cook smarter and eat healther

~Everyday pantry, canning, and freezing tips and much, much more!

Family Feasts for $75 a Week is $11.65 from Amazon (new) and $8.00 from half.com (acceptable condition) and you can get a look inside it here.

BTW, I'm not making any kind of commission by promoting this book.  I just love passing along great stuff!

My First Week of the Pantry Challenge

I successfully finished the first week of the Pantry Challenge and found myself spending a lot more time cooking, but I think as I get on track the time will be less of an issue.  My husband has finally, after 5 years, stopped working full time down in Baltimore with only weekends at home and I'm cooking for one more person.

We ate very well and I found myself testing out some of the things I had processed over the summer.  I used  of my dried cubed zucchini in a "Homemade Rice a Roni" (the recipe follows) that the family loved. 

The next night, I mixed the leftover "Homemade Rice a Roni"(the recipe makes a lot) with browned bulk italian sausage, onions, and some sweet green peppers that were getting wrinkly.   

The family raved about my "Teriyaki Pork Roast" and I got to use up some ginger that has been floating around for awhile. 

After a successful fishing trip my husband came home and grilled Steelhead fillets.

We ate "Pat's Meat Stew" using up some venison shoulder - and a Holiday Bean Soup using a mixed batch of beans and a ham steak.  

On PTA meeting night I made a platter of Havarti cheese cubes, homemade bread slices, carrots, celery, and ranch dip. 

For desserts (because they always want dessert!)  we had coconut drop cookies, brownies, and a homemade apple crumb pie that had been waiting in the freezer.  

How did I enjoy the first week?  I truly enjoyed that we took the time to sit down to meals, talk, and eat good food.  What a pleasure it was to actually use up food rather than disposing of it after it had languished in the pantry and become inedible!

After looking through my pantry and perusing my cookbooks, here's a sampling of what I've planned for future dinners.

Leftover Holiday Bean Soup, homemade biscuits

Manicotti (I made it awhile ago and it must be used)

Roast chicken, pumpkin bread

Apricot Pork Chops

Baked Salmon, corn relish, cabbage salad with asian ginger dressing

Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

Pumpkin Ravioli

Salad, every day.

________________________

Homemade Rice a Roni

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter

2 Tbsp. oil (olive oil is good)

2 cups uncooked long-grain white or brown rice

1 cup uncooked vermicelli or spaghetti broken into 1-inch pieces or shorter

5 cups beef broth

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil or sage (I used 2 Tbsp. dried basil)

1 cup frozen mixed vegetables (I used fresh carrots, odds and ends of assorted frozen vegetables, and dehydrated zucchini)

2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper or to taste

1. In a wok, or heavy skillet, heat butter and oil over medium heat,  When butter begins to melt, add rice and toss to coat well with butter and oil.  Cook until some of the rice starts to brown

2.  Add pasta and keep stirring until some of it has browned bits as well.  When mixture begins to stick a little, add broth, garlic, basil, and mixed vegetables.  Cover and continue to cook until rice is tender, about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  If rice starts to stick to the bottom before it is fully cooked, you made need to turn down the heat a little and add 1/2 cup water.  Total cooking time for white rice will be 20 to 25 minutes.  Brown rice will take 40 to 55 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

~Adapted from "Family Feasts for $75 a Week"

Coudersport Market Farmers Meeting 2012

What is a Farmer's Market?

Definition: A farmers market (a.k.a. greenmarket) is a place where farmers sell their products directly to consumers. Ultra-fresh produce, pastured meat and eggs, artisan cheeses, hand-harvested honey, and other fresh, small-batch foodstuffs are the hallmark (and benchmark) of the best farmers markets. They serve not just as a place for farmers to get the best price and consumers to get the best products, but as venues for producers and consumers of food to come together, forge relationships, and exchange information.

Note: Some "farmers markets" have vendors that sell produce they bought from wholesalers and then re-sell to consumers. Are there bananas at your farmers market in Minnesota? Be suspicious. That produce is the same that is available in supermarkets, which is fine, but then why go to the trouble of going to a farmers market?

~From www.About.com

Last night we held the first Market Farmer's meeting of the year.  We feel that the purpose of a local Farmer's Market is to promote our local farmers and craftspeople who are putting their own sweat, blood, and sometimes tears, into their products.  So we felt we needed to hammer down some guidelines for next years Farmer's Market.  Here's what we came up with so far (in some areas we'll have to get approval).

The Coudersport Farmer's Market will be held on Fridays, from 3 p.m. - 7 p.m., instead of on Saturdays - except for one Saturday a month that will coincide with a proposed "Saturday on the Square" project by the Coudersport Chamber of Commerce.  We hope this change to a weekday will give the people who work in town an opportunity to visit us.  We will also set up on Festival and high volume Saturdays, like the Maple Festival, the 4th of July weekend, the Falling Leaves festival, etc.   

The Market is free for those who are coming and selling their own produce - or up to 75% of their own produce or items (crafts, etc.)  - with the other portion coming from a local farmer.

Anyone selling more then 75% of someone else's produce or items will be charged a fee.

That's about it.  As we get closer to time - and following future market farmer meetings - I'll keep you updated!

Organic Egg Fraud

Organic produce seems the best way to go.  But has the word "organic" been overused by industry to get you to buy those more expensive foods?  Are those organic eggs really all that organic or free-range? 

Watch this.

Look around.  Ask around.  Find someone that's raising chickens and selling eggs.  Maybe go to that place and watch those chickens forage (I had a friend tell me that watching chickens forage was like watching fish swim around a fish tank.  It's so restful).  Know from where your eggs come.  It's more work - but the payoff is really, really worth it!

  

Havarti Cheese - Yum

We visited Atlee Miller, a metal worker from our local Amish community, last week to get some stove pipe made for our maple evaporator.  The people in our Amish community always have at least two, three, or even more, enterprises going and the Millers happened to be selling goat cheese.  So I bought a five pound block of some awesome Havarti goat cheese.  This giant hunk of cheese will fit perfectly into my Pantry Challenge.

The label reads:

Farmstead Fresh

GOAT HAVARTI

A Step Above Organic

Semi-soft Raw Milk Cheese

Ingred: Raw Goat Milk, Cultures, Vegetable Enzymes, and Sea Salt

(then the nutrition information)

MFG. for 

Farmstead Fresh, Inc.

Winfield PA 17889

Aged over 60 days

_________

This stuff is good.

It's a lot of cheese and I worried that it would get moldy before I could use it up.  The Amish guys told me that I could wrap the cheese in a vinegar dampened cloth to prevent mold.   

Now, where can I find good recipes using Havarti cheese?

Brrrr! It's Cold Outside!

It's not as cold as it is for my friend living in Anchorage, Alaska, but it's 10-degrees and this is the coldest we've had yet in this mild winter!

Here's a wintertime rule of thumb:  When you go out, for safety, you should always dress as if your car might break down.  

Pantry Challenge

Have you made your New Year's Resolutions yet?  Have you made a goals list for your homestead?  

We're still working on putting our goals for 2012 together, but one goal we're starting today is a "Pantry Challenge."  What this means is that my family will attempt to eat as much as we can out of our own pantry for the next month.  We'll be going to the grocery store less and having to take more time to plan meals. 

We spent the fall getting our pantry stocked and I hate to see all that hard work go to waste.  But each year it seems like there is far too much food that doesn't get used up and it ends up being thrown away, fed to the chickens/pigs/dogs/cats, or composted.

Sadly, the wasted food does not come from stocking too much.  It comes from going to our grocery store for this and that ingredient and picking up more every time I'm there.  Why?  Because it takes more time to cook, or I forget what I have, or it's not something I really like and I think "why did I buy that?"  It's as simple as I just don't have the ambition to cook or, more likely, I just simply forget to plan.   

I'd love to be able to claim the Pantry Challenge as my own idea, but it's not original.  I follow a blog named Good Cheap Eats.  The Pantry Challenge and it's "rules" originated from there.  You can find those "rules" here.

Yesterday was the first day of my pantry challenge.  I wanted to make a traditional pork roast for New Year's Day, but due to poor planning the roast wasn't thawed in time.  So I found some easy-to-thaw pork chops, the last box of Stove Top stuffing (I know, terrible stuff), and I almost always have cream of mushroom soup in the pantry (I bought a big case of Pacific Foods All Natural Mushroom Soup the last time I was at our "local" big box store, named BJs.  It's a bit more gelatinous in nature than I like, but tastes pretty much same as Campbells -I'll have to use it up).  Then, I went on to the Stove Top website and found a good recipe for Pork Chop Stuffing Bake here.   I made a salad from some great salad greens and some fresh red and yellow peppers that need to be eaten up before they go bad.  I segmented a tangelo from the case that I had bought at the high school from the FFA students.  We have lots of Christmas cookies left over for our dessert.  Dinner!

The family loved it.  There wasn't a bit left.

Starting next Monday I'll keep you updated on how well this challenge has done and (hopefully!) have a meal plan for the next week.

Will you join me for the Pantry Challenge?  I'd love to hear how tackle it!

Please head over to Barn Hop #43 at Homestead Revival!