38 new of 68 responses total.
Leftover conversion: in my family, it's obvious this time of year. The loads of leftover turkey will become turkey sandwiches, turkey salads, & turkey & (also leftover) gravy over (reheated) mashed potatoes & stuffing. Lots of mashed potatoes left over means we'll see hash browns a bit later. Picking the turkey's remains clean indeed is an important job. The least desirable little scraps & bits become a seasonal little-extra-bonus-on-top in the pet food bowl. Leftover cookies & pies just come back as-is until finished off. Rolls & breads come back once, then become bread crumbs for meatloaf. The remains of fresh veggie snack trays (celery, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, etc. return in salads, then baked into a quiche or casserole. When there's lots of something that will freeze okay (usually meat), some is frozen to come back mid-January or so.
resp:30 au contraire, they work just fine. One dieting tip says eat a King's breakfast, a Prince's lunch, and a pauper's dinner, so it's fine. We are not vegetarians, so all of them have some kind of meat-- mostly chicken. I have a hard time with preparation, Sindi. I don't necessarily have tons of time and I just don't have the patience sometimes to cook for people that don't always wait or appreciate it much. Or maybe I haven't gotten into a routine habit-- cooking is a big deal thing for me.. I really get into it once I do. I like super quick, super simple. Nuke it and eat it. And I don't like cooking one night and eating the leftovers the following nights. So I must be spoiled, I guess. resp:31 I don't know why, but ugh.
The trick with leftovers is not visit them the next day. But don't wait so long they go bad, either.
You can also freeze them for a little later. I just used the leftover mashed potatoes to make a vegetarian Shepards Pie. YUM.
Jeanne is a very good cook. I KNOW!
Cheater's Stew: 1 to 1-1/2 # stew beef (the really cheap stuff) Seasoned flour (flour, salt, pepper, other spices to taste in a paper bag) 2 or 3 potatoes, cut in chunks 2 or 3 onions, quartered Some carrots, cut in chunks Some celery stalks, cut in chunks Mushrooms (optional) Garlic to taste (optional) 3-4 cans Franco-American Beef Gravy If it's not in pieces already, cut up the beef. Put it in the bag with the seasoned flour and shake it around. Brown it and drain it. Place the beef, vegetables, and gravy in a large pot and simmer, covered, at least until the potatoes are done. The longer it simmers, the more tender the beef will be. It ain't fancy, but it's cheap and palatable.
I usually use beef bouillon for my stews.
Never heard of canned Franco-American beef gravy.
I should think that bouillon (just boil 1 cube per cup of water) would certainly be cheaper. You can get giant containers ( I think 100 cubes or so ) for about $5.
New situation, new digs. We eat oatmeal a lot more frequently now, and remember Sindi and Jim's tip on cooking it without burning :) We try to get old-fashioned when we can, more fiber that way, but we get a lot of quick oats from the food bank. Beans are a marvelous thing. I made a mix from some I had in storage (some we had gotten from the food bank, again) and added a soup mix to it which had letter pastas and lentils in it. I usually soak them overnight or Julie might boil them if we are pressed for time, and usually slow cook it until it gets to a chili-like consistency. I add spices on hand, of course, but I recently got some dried chiles from the Farmer's Market that work super. We don't have it down perfect-- I tend to eat out a lot, usually at Subway to float between meals. It is my lazy man's out when I want to get a lot of veggies and I'm not ready to prepare something. Of course I know it is hardly cheap. I've found frozen foods are really great-- frozen veggies, frozen fruits-- often cheap and I understand they usually retain their nutrition a little better than fresh. We get bulk food now too at the store we usually frequent. We can usually get most of our spices there and even 'prepared' foods are a little more reasonably priced. It's a work in progress, but we'll get better at it. Was reading this again and made a note that I should find Jeff Smith at the library. Should be easy to do online and my sister works at our main branch so getting and returning books is a snap.
BEANZ MEANZ FARTZ
'Ello! (just joined the conf, so I thought I would say 'ello). The whole 'eating at home' thing is kind of new for me- but I'm finding that it can be quite enjoyable.
you can make 2-3 meals out of a Little Caesar $5 hot-n-ready pizza.
Yes but that's not particularly healthy...
resp:41 darn skippy. resp:43 can never make pizza stretch well... say, when we get a u-bake pizza it tends to get snarfed. No, not particularly healthy. Usually done for speed and convenience (mostly convenience).
almost forgot. sister brought by the Jeff Smith cookbook from the library. also found some frugal-type recipes on the Internet, both from the Frugal Gourmet and from other sources.
If you have a bread machine, you could take fresh-baked bread for lunch instead of buying Subway sandwiches. Used machines are quite cheap around here, Value World had them for $5 or so, and we found a working one at the curb.
Well that requires purchase of stuff to put in sandwiches. and plenty of time. Hmm, I wonder where in my teeny kitchen I could fit a bread maker... My Beau and I are having difficulties keeping salad stuff fresh for very long in our fridge. Gets quite annoying really.
'stuff' has to be cheaper than buying sandwiches. You can run the bread machine in another room than the kitchen, where you don't mind the noise, even the bathroom. I can't imagine it would take more time to purchase something to put in sandwiches, than to go to a place that sold them and wait to buy one every day.
It can be- but honestly the problem I often run into is the quanity that needs buying. If it doesn't get all used up and goes bad than it's a waste of money. What this really means is that my planning skills need work. ;) As for the time... when you put it like that, I have to agree with you. For the bread machine, I have a fairly good sized apartment- it's just got stuff in many places- and boxes of books since we only have two bookshelves. Putting a bread machine somewhere other than the counter/cupboard isn't likely to happen. And running it... with two cats, one of whom earned the nickname Danger Boy!, I would rather have the bread machine running in the kitchen where I can better protect it. ;)
Jim says he runs his bread machine in the garage. I don't see how a cat could damage a machine, or vice versa - do they try to open lids? What do you put into sandwiches that you cannot either buy in smaller amounts, or freeze?
No, not opening lids- chewing cords. I used to joke that my Sasha was a great mouse hunter- except the mice she killed were connected to computers. Part of the problem is also that we don't have a great refrigerator- it's very damp. So things like lettuce, onions and tomatoes (well they're okay) go bad more quickly than they should. Getting a new fridge means arguing with the landlord. As it is we buy 4 tomatos and they go bad before we eat them all. Usually it's because we're lazy and get the 'bag' salad and that almost always goes bad before we eat it all. Like I said, poor planning in terms of what meals will be eaten in the coming week and shopping accordingly.
Do you keep your vegetables in the plastic bags they come in? That raises the humidity a LOT. Take them out and keep in the vegetable bin (crisper) or even an open colander. I have never heard of a refrigerator being too humid. The self-defrosting ones have the opposite problem, they dry things out. If you are used to those, but have a non-self-defrosting one, get used to taking things out of bags. Jim asks if you are putting uncovered foods in there, which will evaporate and increase the humidity.
The problem seems to be the freezer automatic defroster- it drips into the fridge. I actually keep a small bowl in there to catch the condesation, it gets emptied every few days or so. So that would be where the humidity comes from. Sadly our fridge really is a joke and while we try to put the veggies in some other container and in the crisper they just don't stay crisp.
It sounds like the tube from the freezer to the area below the refrigerator, which is supposed to drain the melted ice, is clogged, so the water drips onto the inside of the refrigerator. It is fairly simple to unclog them with a pipecleaner or maybe a coat hanger. This is not condensation collecting, but melted freezer ice. We have at least one free refrigerator in good condition that was thrown out because it had a clog in the drain line. If you cannot figure out how to unclog, I will ask Jim for more details, but I think it is up near the freezer, assuming it is a one-door model. My crisper is badly designed and rots things because it has no drain/ventilation holes near the bottom, where the humidity tends to be highest because cold air sinks.
I'll look at it when I get home- but it is a two door (the freezer has a separate door from the main fridge).
Is the lower compartment also self-defrosting?
No idea. I'll have to find out.
If it is, look for a drain tube and clean it out with pipecleaner. Or make sure you are not putting uncovered foods in there, which do increase the humidity and cause condensation.
resp:47 I need to find out about getting some more wheat. We ground some wheat in a blender for flour once and we got bread that was sort of like cracked wheat bread. We've usually been buying bread at a bakery outlet- about 3 for $1 or 3 for $2... I am sure you'll tell me that bread machine bread is ultimately cheaper. As for sandwich stuffs, I agree with Anne-- it is tough getting a lot of veggies and the like to keep. Right now, we've had good success with tuna sandwiches-- we use a recipe that uses onions, pickles, and dillweed. I could add romaine quite easily. On the subject of used items-- those are much harder to come by here, even harder to find places to fix cheaply-- I would love to have someone like you guys to fix our poor little vacuum cleaner that just dies everytime I turn it on and run it through 2-3 rooms.
Re: #60- is the vacuum overheating? Mine was doing that. The Beau figured out a way to open it up and clean the filter (it's still not that great of a vacuum, but it never really was to begin with. ;) ). Back to the sandwich thing- not being a vegetarian, getting decent meat fillings can be annoying. Gotta be careful it's not overly processed, etc.,
Bread machine bread consists of whatever you choose to make it from. 3 for $1 bread is probably the white puffy stuff with no taste or texture or fiber. Check the vacuum cleaner for threads wound around the roller. Why take sandwiches at all? You can bring other things in containers and eat with spoon or fork. Cook extra the day before.
I hate to sound like I'm purposefully trying to be difficult however... Keeping items fresh during the day while in their containers can also be an issue. Keeping items cold or warming them up so that they don't go bad. Which, come to think of it, is also a reason taking sandwichs can be difficult. It can be very difficult when you don't have a schedule that's totally of your choosing.
Do you work some place that has an employee refrigerator? You can take a small insulated bag with a coldpack in it to keep things cold. Hard cheese can be left at room temperature for a long time without spoiling. So can uncut fruits, which includes tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers.
Well I work someplace with an employee fridge now, but I haven't always.
In the (distant past?) when I packed lunches for myself, I routinely made a week's worth of sandwiches and froze them, so that on a weekday morning I only pulled out a sandwich or two from the freezer and added a piece of fruit or vegetable. The sandwiches were mostly peanut butter, and one of our cats was fond of peanut butter, so he expected his share.
Why did you freeze peanut butter? It keeps pretty well at room temperature. I used to put apple slices in my peanut butter sandwiches. To upset people at school, I would also add just about anything else that stuck, including green beans (cooked) or cranberry sauce. The carrot tops were not very good.
resp:61 Julie (I should start calling her Ms. Fix-it now) figured it out. She said the brush roller had too much hair on it and couldn't spin. Took off the hair-- problem fixed. i.e. resp:62-- exactly. resp:62 au contraire, it's reasonably tasty, and reasonably fibered (usually just 2 g though :/ ) I guess it's time to start workin' that bread machine...
You have several choices: