Archive for in the kitchen

Canning

August 13, 2008 · Filed under in the kitchen · Tagged , ,

Last Friday I spent the entire day (8am-6pm) at my grandmother’s house…..what could I have been doing all day at her house? Well, we were canning! Canning applesauce. We put away about 16 quarts and 19 pints. Why so much? I have no idea. But I do know that I’ve got a dozen pints and two quarts in my pantry right now. Not to mention the one my husband has already started eating! So, we’re set on applesauce for quite some time.

The whole process of canning fascinates me! Just the use of heat to seal the jars, keeping the food in those jars fresh for months and months to come! Wow! I’m still learning how…apparently its a very precise process. But I am learning…reading all I can get my hands on and helping out when I can. Its been lots of fun! My gra’ma’s husband says that I’m turning into a farmer’s wife. I wouldn’t mind that one bit….as long as Aaron wanted to be a farmer!

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fresh fish!

May 1, 2008 · Filed under in the kitchen · Tagged , , , , , ,

Have I got a story for you!

Saturday, my husband and I went our separate ways for the afternoon – he went fishing with the boys, and I stayed home painting pots with my sister. Well, Sis and I are in the garage with the door up painting our flower pots, when all of a sudden, the bottom falls out – I mean some serious rain! We, of course were fine because we were still inside, but my thoughts immediately went to my husband! Out there fishing in the rain!

I gave him a call to see how things were going. He said that they were soaking wet, but the fish were biting like crazy! He was so excited (he doesn’t really get to go fishing a lot, and typically when he does, he finds it rather dull…so this was a good thing for him).

Well, a couple hours later, he comes dripping in the door with a smelly Target bag of fish – he’d kept 4 of them! And brought them into my house! I was like “What are you doing?!”

“Do you know how to clean these?”

Like I’m supposed to know how! So he makes a few phone calls to some of his other fishing buddies to find out what he needs to do with them. And the whole time I’m thinking, where did you get these fish? Where is this lake? Are you sure we can just up and eat these things? Well, he finally decides that he is going to freeze them until he has time to clean and fillet them. So, he throws the whole Target bag into my freezer!! And for the next few days I’m trying to dodge this bag of WHOLE FISH that is sitting front and center in the freezer!

Well, he finally got around to cleaning those little guys and we fried them up last night! He was so proud that he was able to go out and catch dinner with his bare hands. Providing for his family in the truest since of the term! And I was proud of him (although I will admit that I was a little disgusted at first, but once he handed me the fillets, they looked just like the ones that I bought at the store just the other day…so I was fine).

I sautéed them with this fabulous recipe that I found on the website I was telling you about the other day. Cilantro Lime Sea Bass! It was delicious! Although I did alter the recipe a tad. I first salt and peppered the fillets. And despite the title of the recipe, it did not call for lime. ??? I really liked the idea of lime, so I just squeezed some over the top of the fish right before they were finished cooking. Also, when I was done there were a lot of brown bits still left in the pan, so before I look the tomatoes out, I deglazed the pan with some chicken stock to make a sauce. Then we just poured that down over the fish. I served it with some brown rice (seasoned with oregano, crushed red pepper flakes, garlic salt, fresh ground black pepper, one bay leaf, and some roasted bell peppers) and steamed broccoli. It was delicious, and it looked beautiful! If you’ve never tried this deglazing technique, I would highly recommend it! Click on the link for instructions.

Good luck!

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what’s for dinner?

April 28, 2008 · Filed under in the kitchen · Tagged , , , , , , ,

Are you one of those people that plans out their meals for the week? Or do you just wing it every day? My momma always taught me to make a menu for the week and then make your grocery list. And I’ve found that this method has been so wonderful! Plus, I have a good time trying to fit everything together. Its like a puzzle that I have to solve every week!

Not only do I get a little kick out of planning our meals, but it has really been helpful in several ways. My husband is a health nut. He enjoys exercise and most of all eating healthily. Now, I’m a southern girl, so I’ve learned to cook with lots of butter, frying food, and always having plenty of sweets on hand. Even though my husband was brought up on the same type of food, he has since changed his view and desires a more healthy diet. So, here I am trying to adapt – trying to keep that southern taste that I love yet cooking our food in a more healthy way. But that is a topic for another day.

Back to eating healthy… I’ve noticed that planning out our meals for the whole week helps me to really balance our diet and give us a nice variety of foods. Not only does it keep me on a healthy track, but it has also helped to save us some money as well. After I make the menu, I head into the kitchen and make my grocery list. I get everything I need for the whole week’s meals. This way I cut back on impulse buying – I really don’t need those fresh, sweet smelling donuts or that frozen pizza – and my hubby is a lot more happy with the lower grocery bills!

So, now that maybe I’ve convinced you to start thinking about planning your weekly meals, you ask,

Where do I go from here? How do I organize my meals and grocery lists?

Well, you could do like I have done for the past year of our marriage, and get out several pieces of paper – one for breakfast meals, one for lunch meals, one for dinner meals, and one for your grocery list. Then get a hand full of the most helpful of the cookbooks that you have, and search for recipes, trying to keep variety and still pick something that the family will like. Having last week’s plan close by to make sure not to duplicate meals too soon.

Shew! A lot to juggle, right?

Well, yesterday I found a website that has changed my meal planning life! Meals Matter is amazing! After a couple minutes to register a user name and password, you’ve got all the tools you need to plan your family’s meals! This site is so helpful – it covers all the bases! Includes a calendar where you can enter each meal for each day (even snacks, if you choose), shopping list, and recipe search. Sounds pretty basic, huh? So, what’s all the fuss, you ask? The amazing part is how each of these tools work together and compliment each other!

Say you are planning out your week, but you’ve run out of ideas for a fresh and exciting dinner. No problem, you simply search the recipe database – maybe I want to have chicken, I know I won’t have much time to prepare the dinner that night so I need a fast recipe, and I only need to feed myself and my husband. So I enter all of that into the search, and I get a list of recipes that all have these requisites. Now, I can click the link on the left and add that right onto my meal plan calendar!

Not only that, but once I’ve assembled my meals for the week, I can click on one button that adds all of the ingredients for the recipes that I’ve selected onto my shopping list! Then I simply go back through and delete all of the items that I already have in my pantry or fridge. Need to pick up items that aren’t on the list of ingredients? That’s ok, just add them to the list by typing them in yourself.

I’m so excited about this new set of tools that I’ve found in the Meals Matter site! Check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think. I hope you find it as helpful as I did!

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