Week two and three

There was not much to report from the last two weeks. Dinner was made, groceries were bought, cookbooks were much perused with a serious desire to buy. We did eat lunch at a local hamburger eatery last week when husband was off, and mac and cheese and ramen noodles were made but they are gone. I can't recall anything particular i made, but have figured out:

• I need to seriously need to stock up on the basics. Besides running out this last week of just about every staple - ketchup, freezer bags, flour - I was honestly surprised by the variety of food I could make without going grocery shopping several times because of monetary restrictions. Captain Obvious, I know.
  
• I need (well, maybe more of a want but still a highly functional want) a food dehydrator. I borrowed two Raw cookbooks from the library and was intrigued by a few recipes. Plus, I would be able to preserve more food. Woot! for homemade fruit leather.
  
• a deep freezer would be awesome, if we could figure out a place to put it. But that is dreaming really, really big.
  

Week one of the new year

I semi-successfully negotiated my home-made resolution. With the exception of a single last minute trip to Chick-fil-a to meet friends and play, I managed to make breakfast, lunch and dinner this first week of the new year. Even the leftovers got eaten and only the barest of scraps were fed to the feral kittehs. The menu items included:

Meat-based

• turkey breast with collard greens and box potatoes found in the pantry
• meatloaf, garlic potatoes and broccoli
  
• pot roast, leftover garlic potatoes and corn
• ground turkey helper with corn
  

Veg*n

• black bean and polenta casserole
• Singapore Spicy Noodles with seitan (recipe below)
  

I'm adding some new recipes sites to my blog-roll so I can get away from expensive meat-intensive weekly meals. If there was one use of the money spent at Chick-fil-a, the restaurant we went to was right next to Central Market, a grocery store I've avoided based on financial necessity and anti-principals. But, I will have to admit, they do have a very nice produce and bulk food selection. I think I can afford it if I go once a month and stock up and not take the kids - Sulla had his eye on a 15dollar bottle of extra virgin olive oil. I don't care how tasty it might be, generic will do us just fine.

Singapore Spicy Noodles with Seitan
I found this recipe with some others I must have collected when I first went vegan and never actually made. The seitan was added to make it a more substantial meal. Meat and taters loving husband gave it a thumbs up. I found it a little bland, but will make it again since husband and the kids liked it so much and will fuddle with the spices. Here it is, as I made it.

• 1 1/4 cup water
• 2 TBSP ketchup
• 2 1/2 tsp packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp fresh chopped cilantro (or like me, you can add as much as you have handy)
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp garlic granules
• 1/2 tsp dried parsley
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 2 chopped green onions
• 3 TBSP chunky peanut butter, natural
• 8 oz spaghetti, cooked and drained
• 8oz seitan, thinly sliced
  
• 1 tsp minced garlic (or more, never can have too much garlic)

In medium saucepan, combine water, ketchup, sugar, cilanto, cornstarch and seasonings. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; summer uncovered. Meanwhile cook pasta and sautee garlic and seitan. Add green onions and peanut butter to sauce. Mix well. Then toss seitan, sauce and noodles together and serve warm.

Happy Consualia!

I'm a total nerd, right? In researching some things for Saturnalia, I discovered two other holidays that book end that Roman festival. December 15th is Consualia, the feast day of Consus, the God of the Storage Bins. It's one in a long line of harvest holidays.

It's a fun little holiday considering Roman holidays work good for texas because the seasons allign better than those of colder climates. My last harvest was two weeks ago when we finally got a hard freeze. I'm celebrating by putting some seed money in the silos and cleaning and refilling my flour/sugar/bean jars.

Always being one for a project, I've decided on my new year's resolution. 2009's resolution was a mixed bag. We wanted to save a lot of money. That was a mixed bag. We saved as much a we could before various things happened - major car repairs done only to have a car crap out completely. Then sulla started school. We had to replace a water heater and the windshield wiper motor on my car died while taking the boys to school during a rain storm. There went 400bucks.

So this year, rather than just saving money, I'm looking for something more holistic. It's going to be a DIY year, mostly based on home cooking. I've started reading ahead to get a jump on spring. There's been a lot of news and articles lately about food politics as well as "back to the land" recession reaction. This is nothing new to me, I'm just now feeling the fire. Lake Worth still does not have recycling and the white person in me hates throwing out all that trash from pre-packaged foods. So here's the plan of action:

• Grow more of our own food - always always
• No eating out at all! - this one is going to be a toughy, especially with the kids. when the weather is crappy, it's just easy to go to the local fast food place to play. But with many of the establishments still using STYROFOAM!? i cant stand it anymore.
• Staying away from packaged foods - this has lots of benefits. No artificial flavours/preservatives, less waste, no spooky plastic chemicals. I haven't decided about what to do about town talk - I can find decent food there.
• Crack out the sewing machine and knit more
• Reduce, reuse, blahblahblah
• Learn more about basic home repair and do it myself where safety and skill isnt an issue - like the damned fence in the back yard. Build a chicken coop so we can get chickens and guinea hens. And building that damned solar oven I've been wanting to do for the last two summers.

I'm even looking into recipes for condiments and basics like crackers - these will probably be more for fun than practicality. But what's life if you can't make it fun.

We will see how far I can take this.

dreams (or nightmares) only gardeners have

last night i had the worst dream that tobacco hornworms had started attacking my tomato plants. this late in the season! It's getting down into the 50s at night so most pests are gone (with the exception of the army worms and cabbage worms noming on my collard greens, though the later are mostly gone. ive been letting the boys pick them up and step on them.) and my tomato plants have about 10 fruits on them and are growing like crazy ever since the temperature dropped and we had several months of consistant rain. ive been telling myself i need to harvest my basil before i lose all of it to an early frost - besides, it's crowding out my broccoli - so my brain must have picked that little point to focus on.

in my dream im going out to harvest the basil and i notice the typical signs of hornworms - nubby little stumps where there used to be lush foliage. i bend over and these suckers are HUGE! the length of texas brown snakes! fat like leopard geckos! cabbage worms were like green garter snakes with nubby little feet hanging out just for a change of scenery.

so im taking the hint and making boat loads of pesto. guess what we're going to be eating a lot the rest of the year.

kittens

while putting buddytwo to bed tonight, i noticed a cat on our patio. ive seen her a couple of times before. she was playing with a piece of pita bread i left on out there, then she walked towards the back of the yard and i saw a kitten run after her from the fence, then another, and another. there are about 4 or 5. *squeeeee* i went out there and was able to look at them. i think they are weaned, so im not too concerned about catching the mama and not the babies. damn they were cute. there was a grey and white, a pure grey, and a "marbled" one. if i can get one of the babies, husband might let me keep it!! i need to see if SIL still has a cat box from gizmo. im contacting feral friends about getting numbers for them and maybe i can find foster homes for the rest.

husband finished the fence with our neighbour and did habitat for humanity for work and is feeling really handy so he said he would put up a real clothes line for me. aahhh!! he's so sweet.

i made a quick second vegetable bed and am trying roma tomatoes, basil, green onions, carrots, more broccoli and artichokes. i also moved my zuccini because the pumpkins are taking over. but i do have two nice sized yellow squash.

for dinner last night, we had 'white girl does middle eastern.' i made falafel from a box - it was 50cents (love town talk), wheat pita from the day old rack for 1.29, home made hummus - it's hard to figure the exact cost because i did it all by sight/taste, and tabouli - probably 3dollars all told and will feed people all week.

zen and art of household maintainence

i had a fantastic day. made homemade seitan and then used the simmering broth to make creamy chicken and wild rice with leftover roitesserie chicken from the freezer.

tomorow is bread day and im trying english muffins for the first time.