Shopping in my kitchen

I woke up this morning fully intending on making a grocery run today.

As the morning wore on, the idea of loading up my cranky toddler in the car and entering the inner circle of hell (otherwise known as Wal-Mart), looked less and less appealing.

So I grabbed a notepad and decided I was going to see how many meals I could come up with using just the items I already had in my pantry, fridge and freezer.

When I reached seven decent dinners, I stopped and concluded that I absolutely did NOT need to go shopping this week. The cupboards that looked so bare were full of things that could be put together to for nice home-cooked meals. As a bonus, I now have a menu for the week and I've already pulled out the crock-pot and threw some frozen meat in the fridge to thaw. I'm halfway there!

By the way, this is a great way to make your grocery list! It's easy to see what items you need when you start assembling meals on paper.

Here's the meals I came up using just what I already had on hand:

Baked Ziti
Baked Potatoes with sour cream, cheese and bacon
Black beans, stewed tomatoes and brown rice
Roasted chicken, rice and green beans
Chicken soup w/rice (can't let that carcass go to waste!)
Chicken quesedillas with grilled peppers and onions
Veggie omelet
Stuffed Peppers (sans ground beef)

I'm embarrassed that I even thought I needed to go shopping! I even found a nice steak in the freezer I forgot I had. We have enough oatmeal and cereal to get us through a week of breakfast and leftovers will do nicely for lunches. It took me 15 minutes to go shopping in my kitchen and I did it all while Peanut ate breakfast. Can't beat that!

I'm curious what meals YOU might come up with if you took stock of the food in your kitchen! Want to play along? Leave me a comment with the meals you found hiding in your cupboards. Or blog about it and link up here. I'll throw up a MckLinky, just for fun!

Guacamole Salad

My sister made this salad at a get together we had the other night and it was delicious. This one is going in my recipe book for sure! It's adapted from this recipe, with some notable additions and subtractions.

Guacamole Salad

1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
green bell pepper, seeded and 1/2-inch diced
2 cups baby spinach
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup small diced red onion
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated lime zest
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (2 limes)
1/4 cup good olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
2 ripe avocados, seeded, peeled, and 1/2-inch diced

Place the tomatoes, pepper, beans, onion, spinach and lime zest in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together lime juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic and pour over the vegetables. Toss well. Add avocados and fold into salad carefully.

Enjoy!

Homemade bread & butter pickles

Okay, if you are off sugar or don't eat a lot of it - click away now. This recipe is NOT sugar free. Or even low sugar.

Anyway.

I made these pickles years and years ago and I always remembered how well they came out. And since we've been blessed by family members with an over abundance of fresh produce, I decided it was time to try it again.

Okay, get ready. I've gots lots of directions and tons of pictures. Here we go!

You will need:

7 quarts of sliced cucumbers (This is equivalent of about 16 good sized cukes)
5 cups of sugar (I warned you!)
1/3 cup of coarse salt
6 white onions
4 cloves of garlic
3 green peppers
3 cups apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. Celery seed
1 1/2 tsp. Tumeric
1 Tbsp. Mustard seed

Other stuff:

About 6 quart sized (or 12 pint sized) canning jars
2 big pots (or one pot and a canning pot)
Lots of ice
Old towel

Wash you cucumbers very well with warm waster and soap. Rinse and slice them up. Measure them out into a large bowl.

OH! Before I forget, all this slicing takes some time, so occupy your little ones with something fun, like stacking cans or something.

Okay, slice up your peppers, onions and garlic. I chopped up one pepper very fine and then left the other two kind of chunky. You can do it anyway you want. I did the same with the onions. I chopped up two really fine with my food chopper and then sliced the rest into thin strips.

I have no pictures of the onion chopping because chopping six onions will. make. you. cry. This is the hardest part of the whole project. Anyway, moving along.

Mix your cukes, onions, peppers, garlic and coarse salt in a big bowl. I just used my (clean) hands to toss everything very well. I ended up needing two bowls.

Mix a lot of ice (I didn't measure, but I suspect is was at least 20 cups) of ice throughout the cucumber mixture. Again, I used my hands to mix it thoroughly.

Set the bowls aside and let them sit for three hours. Now would be a good time to go dress up your baby and take them outside to get a picture for the RDA photo contest. That's what I did.

On a serious note, I really would suggest timing this project so that your little one(s) are napping or at the very least occupied in another room during this next part. If you are making a batch this big, it'll take at least an hour and require your full attention. And you don't want babies around boiling water. Especially when you are using salad tongs instead of proper canning equipment. But anyway, we'll get there in a minute.

Mix together the rest of your ingredients (vinegar, sugar, tumeric, celery seed and mustard seed) in a big pot and bring to a boil.

In the meantime, drain your cucumbers very well. Do NOT rinse. Take out another large pot (or your canning pot), fill it about halfway and bring to a boil.

You're vinegar mixture should be boiling now - throw all the cukes into the pot and stir well.

They are starting to look like pickles! This is so exciting!

Now we want to bring the cuke/vinegar mixture just to a boil. While you are waiting, prep your cans and lids. We are going to be putting them in boiling water, so we need to warm them up a bit first. Wash them well, and then set them in hot (not boiling) water.

By now, your pot of pickles and your pot of water should be boiling. Turn the cucumbers on low and remove your first jar from the hot water and (carefully) spoon in the pickles. Leave about a 1/2 inch of space between the lid and the pickles. Spoon some of that yummy pickle juice in there too. Before you place the lid on, make sure you use a damp cloth to clean the rim of the jar - even the tiniest speck will keep it from properly sealing. Screw on the lid and set aside. Repeat with enough jars to fill your pot of boiling water. Mine fit four. Very carefully put each jar into the boiling water. There should be just enough water to cover the lids.

Set your timer for 10 minutes. In the meantime, warm up some more jars in your bowl of hot water and then fill them with pickles.

*Ding, Ding* Time's up!

Now, if you have a proper canning pot, you'd just lift your rack and remove your cans. I like to live on the wild side, so I extracted my boiling hot jars with a pair of salad tongs. It worked, but I do not recommend it!

Place the jars on a large towel on your counter.

Repeat this process until all your pickles are gone. Don't move your canned pickles off the towel for at least 24 hours. Test the seal by making sure the center of the lid doesn't "pop" when you press on it. Don't be alarmed if you hear some of the cans "pop" after initially removing them from the boiling water - they will reseal as they cool.

I'm really, really pleased with how these came out. My hubby tested them on a tuna sandwich a few days after I made them and thought they were great.

Please let me know if you try these - I'd love to know how you like them!

Roasted garlic hummus

Aside from green beans and guacomole, there are few things that the Peanut and I enjoy more than hummus. I just recently discovered that you can make black bean hummus by substituing the chickpeas with...black beans. Oh, it is SO yum!

Roasted Garlic Hummus

1 head of garlic

2 cans chickpeas or black beans

Juice from 1 lemon

1 TBSP. Tahini (sesame paste)

2 TBSP. Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

To roast your garlic - chop off the top of the head, coat with olive oil and wrap in tin foil. Bake at 400 degrees for about an hour. Your house is going to smell soooo good. Promise. When it's done, it will look something like this:

After it has cooled, squeeze the soft garlic out of the head directly into your food processor. Toss in the rest of the ingredients.

You will need some of the liquid from the canned chickpeas, but probably not all of it. If you do dump all the juice in, it will be too thin and you'll have to add more chickpeas. Then you'll end up with enough hummus to feed a not-so-small army. Trust me. So, start out with just a couple ounces and add more as needed. Blend until smooth.

Peanut and I are enjoying a lazy summer Saturday afternoon and for lunch we just devoured this roasted garlic black bean hummus slathered on pita bread. Perfection!

Spinach sandwich

More specifically - baby spinach, onion, cheese and roasted garlic hummus sandwich. But a spinach sandwich has more of a ring to it, dontcha think?

This is super easy!

Spread some hummus on your bread - any 'ole kind will do, but I used roasted garlic - slap on a big handful of baby spinach, some sliced onions (I sauted mine for a bit, but raw would be great too!), and top it off with some freshly grated cheddar cheese.


I can not even explain to you how delicious this is. It's like, really good.

In honor of the Body After Baby Challenge, which Samantha over at Mama Notes is sponsoring, you'll be seeing a whole lot more healthy recipes and food ideas over here.

...and I'm really into creative sandwiches right now, so brace yourself.

Quinoa Pilaf

Along with avocados, Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is on the list of my current food obsessions.

When I was a kid, my mom would frequently fix Quinoa for dinner. I recently rediscovered it and we've been eating it at least once a week around here for the last month or so.

Although it is most commonly considered a grain, it is actually the seed of the Chenopodium plant and is more closely related to beets and spinach. Quinoa is considered to be a complete protein because it contains all eight essential amino acids. Not only is it loaded with protein, it's a great source of iron and magnesium and is gluten-free.

It's a fast meal too! It cooks in under 15 minutes and could easily replace rice in all your recipes. We aren't big fans of it cooked plain, but as a pilaf? Yum!

Quinoa Pilaf

2 cups quinoa, cooked

1 green bell pepper

1 zucchini

2 small carrots

1 medium onion

5 cloves garlic

2 TBSP. olive oil

Chop up all your veggies very fine (or chunky if that's the way you like it!).

Saute onion and garlic in the olive oil.

Add veggies and cook for about 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add veggie mixture to quinoa and blend gently with a fork.

My dear husband is not a fan of anything that tastes "healthy" and even he gobbles this up. I improvise with whatever vegetables I happen to have on hand, so I can usually make this even when it's almost time for a grocery run. Last night we had this with grilled salmon - Mmmmmm! The leftovers are great over salad too!

Sugar-Free Banana Bread

This no-sugar thing is not for sissies.

I'm on day three and I'm already struggling. I had no idea how many foods had sugar in them! It's incredibly frustrating. It seems like every label I read has sugar way up high on the ingredient list. Every single whole wheat/whole grain bread variety I checked out at the store today had sugar in them. Guess I'll be making my own bread this week!

Tonight I was craving something sweet like you-would-not-even-believe, so I decided to make good use of the half-rotten bananas sitting on my counter.

I just improvised the recipe, but it actually turned out really great. Not only did these muffins satisfy my sweet tooth, I have plenty left for breakfast tomorrow and another dozen to freeze for later.

Sugar-free Banana Bread (or muffins!)

4 medium over ripe bananas - mashed
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix eggs, oil, honey, milk and bananas in a large bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend. Butter two loaf pans and bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes. Muffins only need about 15 minutes. Slather with butter and enjoy!

Rosemary Oven Fries

These fries are so yummy, I just had to share. Even Peanut-the-picky-eater loves them!

Rosemary Oven Fries

5 red potatoes

1/3 cup vegetable oil

3 tsp. dried rosemary

1 tsp. garlic salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Slice potatoes into 1/2 inch wedges

Whisk together remaining ingredients in large bowl. Add potatoes and toss to coat.

Spread on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 45 minutes, turning every 15.

Remove from oven, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

Easy Guacamole

I’ve been trying for months to try to convince Peanut to add avocado to her limited diet. Did you know that avocado has the highest natural fat content of the most common baby and toddler foods? Since we hit the 12 month mark, Peanut has fallen off the growth charts and although I know she’s healthy and thriving, I’d love to see the little rolls on her thighs and arms return. Additionally, because most of the time I can only sneak in three of four spoonfuls at mealtime, I’m always looking to get the most “bang for my buck”, so to speak.

Anyway, back to avocados. No matter how I fixed it, she just was not interested. I decided to whipped up some guacamole today and it came out super yummy! I found a few recipes online and created one based on the ingredients I had on hand. The only thing I’ll do differently next time is add some fresh cilantro. Otherwise, I thought this was perfect.

Easy Guacamole

2 Avocados
¼ cup finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
½ lemon, juiced
1 TBSP. Sour Cream
Garlic salt and black pepper to taste

Mash up the avocados, squeeze in the lemon juice and stir in the rest of the ingredients.

I offered Peanut a big dollop on a corn chip and she licked every bit of the guacamole off and handed me back the chip. I kept refilling her chip until she decided she’d had enough. I’m thrilled that we not only have another food that she’ll eat, but one that is really high in essential nutrients. Woo Hoo!