Stacyverb

Snapshot: Garden lettuce

Fresh from Anthony's mom's garden in Tennessee.

Budget Bytes vegetable tian

Stacyverb is not a cooking blog, but sometimes it is an eating blog!  And cooking is how we get to the eating part, so....

The other day when I mentioned some of my current favorite blogs, I overlooked one that has been particularly rocking my world lately, and that would be Budget Bytes.  Beth, the woman behind BB, had me with this line: "I am broke and I love to eat."  ME TOO.  She has tons of great recipes for meals that are easy and very inexpensive to prepare. 

Since discovering Budget Bytes a few months ago, the menu here at Boogaloo Acres has vastly improved.  And I think it's made us eat healthier, too.  For example, let's say I'm in the grocery store and I'm thinking about treating myself to some ice cream.  Because of the way Beth breaks down her recipes to show you exactly how much each serving costs, now when I think about spending $3.99 on a pint of Ben & Jerry's, my next thought is immediately, but for $3.99 I could buy ingredients for a whole dinner for two with a Budget Bytes recipe and still have leftovers for lunch.  (Yes, really.)  Sometimes the siren song of junk food is irresistible, but usually, the real meal wins out.

Here's one delicious example, which I made for dinner last night.  It's called Summer Vegetable Tian.  It's got one onion, one potato, one yellow squash, one zucchini, and one tomato (the first good-looking one of the season--hurray!), plus garlic, thyme, olive oil, salt and pepper. 

The onion and garlic are sauted in olive oil and then spread over the bottom of the baking dish (Beth suggested rubbing the dish with a little butter first, so I did). Then you layer your sliced veggies like so, sprinkle them with salt, pepper, and thyme, cover it all with foil and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  Remove the foil, top the veggies with shredded cheese (I used mozzarella) and bake it for another 20 minutes or so.  More detailed instructions and much better pictures here.)

This would make a great side dish or, as I had it last night, a tasty vegetarian dinner by itself (we're a meat-eating household, but we do enjoy meatless meals as well).  It was a nice cozy dish for a rainy night when I was home alone, snuggled up on the couch with some silly sitcoms and a glass of white wine from the wine fairy.

When I make this again, I think I'll add another tomato (this was a little unbalanced in favor of the squashes) and more salt and pepper.  Beth's instructions clearly said to be "GENEROUS" with those, and she was right.  I salted and peppered it again on my plate, and that really helped the flavors of the veggies come together.

Thank you, Budget Bytes!

Wine fairy follow-up

As you may recall, I recently reported that we had a backlog of opened bottles of wine here at Boogaloo Acres and I was frantically trying to find good uses for all of it (besides the obvious).

Since that post, we did drink some, and we gave some away.  The marinara sauce turned out FANTASTIC and is in the freezer.  Last Thursday, I made sangria.  Christy and I drank half of it and I poured the other half into a quart mason jar, also now in the freezer.  On some hot June day, a sangria slushie is gonna taste pretty damn good.

 

Other uses for leftover wine?  Well, here's some nice Shiraz freezing in ice cube trays, for future cooking u se.  (Disclaimer: all the photos in this post are terrible.  They're blurry and the wine looks brown instead of, well, wine-colored.  Trust me when I say that all of these items look much more enticing in person!)

 

Granita!  Instructions from here, minus all the pear business, although that sounds delish and I might try that another time.

 

My friend Megan sent me a link to this recipe for wine syrup.  Oooh, this will be so decadent over some ice cream this summer, or tossed with some veggies in lieu of balsamic vinegar.

Readers piped up with some excellent ideas. Jo suggested wine jelly, which honestly I don't think I even knew was a thing, but it is, and it seems do-able.  And yummy. 

For now, the vino supply is back down to a manageable level.  But I'm bookmarking all this stuff, because it's only a matter of time until we once again end up with a wine surplus. 

In the meantime, this will be my anthem--an old favorite from my childhood.  (Should children even know a song about a heartbroken janitor on a bender?  Maybe not.  Whatever.  I've always loved this song. Also?  I need a hat like that.)

 

Sunday scorcher

It had been a while since Anthony and I had visited the Atlanta Botanical Garden, so we decided to spend some time there today.  Our membership is about to expire, so we just had to take advantage of it one more time. 

So much for that bit of a "cold" spell we had last week--temps reached the 90s today.  I took lots of pictures, but am spotlighting the pretty things I saw that thrive on a hot hot hot day like today.

 

These orchids might be my favorite thing I saw today.  The color combination is exactly what my eye craves in the haze of humid Atlanta summers--hot, bright, unmissable.

 

The steam of the conservatory makes it easy to pretend you're on a tropical adventure in a lush jungle somewhere.

 

Post-Garden treat, speaking of tropical: Italian ice in Island Fusion flavor.  Mango, coconut, and I don't know what else.  Soooo good.  Several years ago, they were handing out piles of coupons for FREE Rita's ice at Anthony's job.  We're still working off of that stack!  (It was a lot of coupons.)  This really hit the spot after tackling all those hills in the blazing sun.

Back home, showered and rehydrated, I made a spicy veggie stir fry for dinner, and might paint my toenails purple tonight.  Hope you all had a fabulous weekend!

The wine fairy

Our next-door neighbors have a wine business, and they often have partial bottles of wine leftover from their tastings.  They're very generous about sharing these bottles, many of which have had only one or two glasses poured from them.  Almost-full bottles of wine often just magically appear on our porch, causing us to exclaim, "The wine fairy was here!"

 

How's this for a problem?  We have too much wine.  I know, many some of you are thinking, "Is that even possible??"  Well, if the bottles were unopened, it would be no problem whatsoever.  But with open bottles, time is not on our side.  Wine keeps showing up, faster than we can dispatch it (we came home to five bottles one recent evening).  We drink some, we give some to friends, but still--it's accumulating.

So this week I'm making it an ongoing project to find uses for our surplus vino.  Today's undertaking: red wine marinara sauce.

 

It's been simmering on the stove for an hour or so, and WOW does the house smell fantastic right now.  I'm using this recipe, but substituting red for white wine because that's what we have (and what we prefer for marinara).  I doubled the recipe and plan on freezing it.  We should get many yummy meals out of this pot.

But...that whole pot of sauce only used one cup of wine.  I have plans for frozen sangria later in the week.  I also might freeze some wine by itself in ice cube trays, to be thawed for cooking use at some future time when (if!) we don't have any wine in the house.  Other projects under consideration: granita, beef bourignon, homemade vinegar.

Any other suggestions?

Update: A few hours after I posted this, there was a knock on the door.  Yup, you guessed it--three more bottles of wine.

Eating well on a budget

[Yeah, I know, I haven't blogged in a while.  I'm not gonna give you a big song and dance about it.  Let's just move on.]

Yesterday I was having a conversation with some gal pals about ways to eat well on a budget.  Anthony and I have gotten really good at this.  Some weeks we budget as little 40 bucks for groceries, and we never go hungry.  We're two adults, eating three meals a day, and we make it work. 

One friend asked if I could share a sample menu with her, and I figured if it would help her, it might help others.  So here we go!

Now, the first thing we do is look in the fridge and the pantry and see what we already have that we can use for meals for the coming week.  Because some stuff we just don't need to buy every week--rice, peanut butter, butter, spices...these are all things that will last for a while and carry us through multiple weeks.

So then we make a meal plan.  No, it's not the most fun we'll have all week or anything, but it helps SO MUCH.  We figure out what we'll be making, and then make a list of the ingredients we don't already have.  Then we go shopping and buy only the ingredients on the list (this is key if we want to stick to our budget).

Okay, on to the food!  Here's a menu from a recent week:

BREAKFAST

On any given day, some combination of two or three of these: bagel w/cream cheese (often we'll split one), cereal w/dried fruit, hard-boiled egg, yogurt, English muffin w/peanut butter, piece of fruit. 

LUNCH

Typically, lunch is the leftovers from the previous night's dinner.  We also keep a few other basics around to supplement that, or to have as afternoon snacks.  In that category would be things like canned tuna, fresh fruit, hummus, crackers, pickles, etc.  (And again, a jar of pickles is one of those things that will be around for a while and doesn't have to be purchased regularly.)

DINNER

Here's what we had in our sample week.

Monday: Chicken enchiladas with Mexican rice and roasted broccoli on the side

Tuesday: Brown Rice & Lentil Casserole (this is a staple in our house, sometimes as a side dish, sometimes as a whole meal on its own)

Wednesday: Chicken noodle soup (when I made the chicken enchiladas on Monday, Anthony deboned the chicken breast first, then used what was left to make a broth and soup by adding some egg noodles, a few veggies, and dried herbs from the pantry)

Thursday: Had dinner at a friend's house.  She sent me home with a big container of extra salad, which I ate for lunch the next day.

Friday: Breakfast-for-Dinner!  I substituted mild Italian sausage (which was on sale) and red potatoes for the breakfast links and frozen hash browns.

Saturday: Tomato-Basil Parmesan Soup, which I put into the slow cooker before I went to work and let cook all day.  Served with some croutons that we already had in the pantry.

Sunday: Pasta with Butternut Squash and Peas, which used up the rest of the half & half and Parmesan that didn't get used for Saturday's soup, as well as some frozen peas we already had.  Plus, although this is orginally a meatless recipe, when Anthony made it he added the rest of the Italian sausage I got for the breakfast hash.  I think the pasta came from the pantry, too.  So basically, all we had to buy specifically for this meal was a squash.

We spent under $40 on groceries that week.  Yes, we already had some of the ingredients in the house, like the brown rice, lentils, and pasta.  But lots of the ingredients we bought for these meals carried over into the following week's menu, like the soft taco shells, the carrots for the soups, some of the eggs, and so forth. 

It definitely helps that we're not large people, we eat meatless meals a few times a week, and we're not opposed to eating re-heated food the next day.  If you're used to big portions and meat-heavy meals, you'll probably have to spend more than we do (or change your habits).  On the other hand, if you're a vegetarian, you'll probably spend less.  But in any case, just because money is tight doesn't mean you have to eat boring, crappy food!

Fall frolicking

I hope everyone's enjoying a beautiful autumn (or spring, for those of you south of the equator).  There have been some lovely days and nights here, and I seem to be spending less time on the computer--thus the lack of blogging.  Let's catch up.

 

What could be more autumnal than a nice crackling fire?  Our friends Kerri and Dave have this fire pit on their back deck, where we celebrated Kerri's birthday a few nights ago.  It was a great evening of friends, fire, good food, and...

 

...pumpkin carving!  Personally, I am terrible at pumpkin carving, so I abstained this year.  I did, however, save the seeds for roasting later.  Mmmmm...pumpkin seeds.

 

On Monday, Anthony and I went out to lunch.  Our work schedules have been out of wack lately, so this was a rare day when we could both be off all day on the same day.  We took advantage of the nice weather and ate outside at Sun In My Belly.

 

Yum!  I couldn't resist this omelette of the day, with chicken sausage and roasted red peppers.  And their biscuits are sooooo good.

After lunch we meandered over to Little Five Points to spend some money at Criminal Records, but on the way we ended up wandering into a Halloween store and, well, this happened:

This might be my favorite photo of my husband, ever.  I giggle uncontrollably every time I look at it.  Not every guy would put on a cowboy hat and gladiator shield and let me take his picture, am I right?  Oh, and he would like you all to know that he was giving the battle cry, "FOR SPARTA!!!!" in a very manly voice when this shot was taken.

 

Moments later, I was viciously attacked by this flesh-eating ghoul baby.  Zombie babies: they're real, and they're hungry.  Beware!

More thoughts about food

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments both here on the blog and in person, responding to Tuesday's post about In Defense of Food.  I loved hearing what you had to say!  American attitudes about food are really demented, aren't they? (Photo: Panorama Orchards)

This comment from Sandy sums it up pretty well, I think.  She writes,

"I am allergic to cow's milk, and as such cannot have cheese, ice cream, chip dips, cream sauces, butter, and so on. Yes, I am thin. I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me, 'You are so lucky!' Really? That's not how it feels to me as I watch you eat cheesecake."

Right.  It's as if Americans basically expect to be overweight, and anyone who doesn't have to worry about being tempted by "sinful" offenders like cheesecake is to be envied.  Too often, our thoughts about food and health boil down to, Will this make me fat?.  Close behind that is, How can I get a cheap, convenient meal and get it over with?, which is often at odds with the making-you-fat question.

It's a common misbelief that healthy eating is expensive.  Money is on everyone's mind these days, often blocking out thoughts of anything else.  I'm certainly guilty of that.  In the past year, my husband has been making the transition from unemployment to self-employment.  So money's been scarce, and in the meantime I was working six or seven days a week to make as much income as possible, which meant my free time was even scarcer. 

As Anthony started to bring more money in, and the seasonal schedule at my job changed, I cut back to working five days a week at the end of July.  To my surprise, one of the things I felt like doing with this extra free time was preparing meals.  During those months when, between my jewelry and the shop, I was working 12+ hours a day, Anthony was doing almost all the cooking for us.  Even on my day off, we'd sometimes treat ourselves to a restaurant meal, just to go out somewhere together.  So the chance for me to actually prepare a meal for us felt quite decadent to me, and I ended up thinking about food a lot. :)

The other main reason I started thinking so much about food this summer was that last summer was, in a word, horrible.  Anthony lost his dad.  A month later he lost his job.  And in between, a bunch of other stuff happened that was relatively minor but also stressful at the time (e.g., broken air conditioner during a relentless heat wave).  So this summer, I was determind to focus on the pleasant things about the season, one of the main ones being delicious fresh produce.  Savoring the flavors of summer was really good for me in a lot of ways.  Finding ways to make food that's inexpensive, delicious, nutritious, and not time-consuming has been tricky, but I think we've gotten pretty good at it.

Let's keep this conversation going!  How do YOU decide "what's for dinner?"  Do you base your choices on taste?  On cost?  On convenience?  On what will or won't make you fat?

In Defense of Food

Recently I read Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food. This summer, I got very interested in planning healthy meals at home (more about the why and how of this another time), and Pollan's philosophy about food grabbed my attention from the cover of this book: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

It's simple advice, but more complicated than it seems. Pollan's basic premise is that most of the things available in a typical American supermarket aren't food at all. It's a lot of packaged, processed, engineered “edible food-like substances,” but it's not food in the way that fresh produce or meat is food. That food-like stuff might be tasty, and it might keep us from starving, but what else is it doing to us?

For one thing, according to Pollan, it's keeping us from being able to enjoy eating. Packaged food, fast food, all of that--it's too convenient. It's meant to be consumed in a hurry, not savored. The experience of eating it is unsatisfying, which makes us want to eat more because our bodies know they haven't gotten what they need.

Which brings us to another good point--how much food do our bodies need? Probably not as much as we think they do. The American lifestyle of eating on the go, eating at our desks, etc., leads us to eat mindlessly and to be unaware of how much we're actually consuming. Pollan cites several fascinating studies from professor Brian Wansink, one of which was a survey that asked two groups--one American, one French--how they know when to stop eating. The Americans said things like, “When my plate is clean” or “When I run out of food.” The French people said simply, “When I feel full.”

Ah, the French. We Americans can learn a lot from them about the place of food in our lives. Pollan cites a survey conducted by psychologist Paul Rozin in which Rozin showed the words “chocolate cake” to participants and asked them for a word in response. Among French people, the top answer was “celebration.” The most common response from Americans? “Guilt.” Yikes.

I knew it before, but this book really drove the point home--Americans are really screwed up about food! Two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and preventable diseases like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure are much more common here than elsewhere. We all know someone who eats nothing but take-out food, or someone who's on some crazy diet because they think eating fruit (!) is what's making them fat. Especially among women, we hear this kind of talk from each other all the time--feeling guilty about enjoying food, punishing ourselves in the gym for some dietary transgression (the idea that exercise = punishment is also really screwed up), talking about food in moral terms like “this dessert is so sinful!”

Food isn't our enemy, and the fact that it needs to be defended is pretty sad.  Eating should be a way to nourish our bodies, as well as being a sensory pleasure and a chance to spend time with family and friends. Pollan reminds us that without the distraction of food marketing or politically motivated “nutrition” claims, our bodies basically know what to do--eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

SSS, Days 10, 11 & 12: Tennessee

For Saturday, Day 10, I needed an outfit that would be presentable for work, yet also comfortable enough for a five-hour car trip after work.  My husband and I were heading to Knoxville, Tennessee, to visit his mom for a couple of days.

Maybe it's because I first wore this skirt during my trip to Mexico in 2008 (that fact plus the color gave this garment its nickname, "the guacamole skirt"), but it's one of my go-to items to wear and/or pack for warm weather travel.  Cool, comfy, looks fine with any neutral color on top--easy.

 

• Skirt: Yet another McCall's 4783 (OOP)
• Earrings: Beaded by me

 

 

Holy crap!  Look, everybody--it's a 2-headed squirrel!!  Or at least a poorly drawn one.  The reason why I'm next to this sign is a topic for another post.

For now, let's talk about my shirt, worn in honor of the first Sunday of football season.  It's my Steelers shirt, which I love.  Unfortunately, my team got clobbered in their season opener, but let's not talk about that right now...oh look--a two-headed squirrel!

• Top: Vogue 8078 (OOP)
• Earrings: Beaded by me

 

 

On the way back to Atlanta from Knoxville, we paid a visit to Panarama Orchards for some apples.  This place has become one of our favorite stops whenever we have a chance to take the back roads instead of the interstate.  So many delicious varieties of apples are coming into season now, like these Honey Crips I'm clutching here. :)

• Top: Simplicity 2614
• Earrings: Beaded by me

I'm getting behind on my SSS posts--have been too busy living in the clothes and not just posing in them!