What are you cooking?

[Bliss Doubt]

Made with fresh garden maters, fresh garden onion, fresh garden sweet peppers, frozen hot peppers from the garden, and Organic spices, tastes super, ain't nothing like the taste of fresh

So you dip something in it to eat it? Or spoon it over something?

Just wondering, since I know you don't eat corn tortilla chips.

 

[Jimi]

So you dip something in it to eat it? Or spoon it over something?

Just wondering, since I know you don't eat corn tortilla chips.

Yes I spoon it on my baked taders and eat it just as is, I just love the taste

 

[Jimi]

So you dip something in it to eat it? Or spoon it over something?

Just wondering, since I know you don't eat corn tortilla chips.

I decided to make some oven fries to dip in the salsa, might haveta make more salsa

 

[Jimi]

Made some chili with mostly garden ingredients
Garden onion
garden green/yellow/red peppers
Garden maters
(all fresh) and garden hot peppers from last year
canned beans
Organic spices



Of coarse I have already eaten a couple bowls, delicious
I like big chunks of maters onions and peppers, chunky chili
I like chili all year long

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I like chili all year long

Me too, any time, all year.

That looks delicious.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I made ramen for dinner, all organic:

The noodles
baby bok choy
green onion
crushed garlic
salt
chili crisp
soy sauce

I always forget until I sit down to eat it, you need more water to make it soupy like the package ramen kits.
Mine tends to end up like spaghetti. It tastes great, but there's none of that last slurp after the noodles are all gone.

Greedy girl ate it up without taking a pic. If I can get more of the organic baby bok choy I'll make more and photograph it.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

When TV or online chefs rhapsodize about using strong herbs, they always say "just a pinch" or "just the merest touch" before kissing their fingers, m'wah! But I can never get enough. What's the point of having the flavor disappear so you don't even know what it is?

So here is the bowl of dill with tuna that was my breakfast lunch today.



That 3-4 tablespoons is a whole can of tuna. Did they shrink the can again?

It was delicious, with the organic salt & pepper crackers.

Maybe tomorrow I'll make a bowl of basil with spaghetti marinara and post that.

Mmmm fresh organic herbs.

 

[Jimi]

I can't have store bought catsup and had some maters sittin around that were ready to make something outta so I decided to make catsup
These are Amish Paste maters, sorta a roma mater only much larger and much much meatier, oh and they are much sweeter. I weighed a larger one 319 grams (between 11 and 12 ounces)

Here's a look at them sliced, very meaty and very few seeds, this is just some of them I am usin 7 and a half pounds



I ground them up put them in a pan added
organic date sugar,
organic allspice
organic apple cider vinegar
organic onion powder
organic mustard seed
organic celery seed
Organic cinnamon
and Sea salt
and cooked them down into THIS

This tastes so good, FAR better than any store bought.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I can't have store bought catsup and had some maters sittin around that were ready to make something outta so I decided to make catsup
These are Amish Paste maters, sorta a roma mater only much larger and much much meatier, oh and they are much sweeter. I weighed a larger one 319 grams (between 11 and 12 ounces)

Here's a look at them sliced, very meaty and very few seeds, this is just some of them I am usin 7 and a half pounds



I ground them up put them in a pan added
organic date sugar,
organic allspice
organic onion powder
organic mustard seed
organic celery seed
Organic cinnamon
and Sea salt
and cooked them down into THISView attachment 217380

This tastes so good, FAR better than any store bought.

Jimi, that looks divine, and is probably much closer to the original or oldest concept of catsup.

 

[Jimi]

Jimi, that looks divine, and is probably much closer to the original or oldest concept of catsup.

The AP maters made it easy, hardly no seeds or juice, they were so clean I didn't haveta run them through a food mill

 

[Bliss Doubt]

As promised, here is that luscious bowl of basil with pasta marinara. Fresh basil only stays green and pretty for 2-3 days in the fridge, so use it or lose it, but I've heard it freezes to good effect.

For the marinara I used organic pizza sauce. The ones from Muir Glen and Whole Foods contain no sugar or corn syrup.

I also skinned a fat tomato, chopped and added that to the sauce, some red pepper flakes, salt and a ton of crushed garlic. Simmered just a few minutes. Then in with the angelhair noodles. They are so fine and thin, they cook right in the sauce in no time.

I photographed the dish it before adding some grated parm on top and folding it all together.



That was my breakfast-lunch today, so good. All that basil is like spinach with something extra. I can never get enough.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

When you see organic fruit cheaper per piece than a mass market candy bar, you know it's a great deal.
When I shopped early morning yesterday I found five varieties of organic stone fruit at 68 to 86 cents per piece: black plums, yellow peaches, pluots, red plums, white nectarines. They're all hard still, so I have them in a bag ripening (I hope). I'm stoked.

Also got boxes of kiwi, blackberries, mini cucumbers, grape tomatoes, a canteloupe, another 3-pack of baby bok choy, all organic.

And this watermelon, a beautiful splash of summer. I wanted to practice the sticks cut, and I managed it. All by myself. Without cutting my arm off.



Slurp! Love this time of year for produce.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

My delicious breakfast-lunch today: chai oatmeal.

I found this organic Chai concentrate, which comes without dairy, so you can make it creamy with your choice of plant milk, dairy milk or cream.



I have so much excellent organic fruit I bought this week, needing to be used up before it gets old and moldy while I eat tacos .

So I mixed up the Natures Path plain organic instant oatmeal with hot water and a dab of butter as usual, then poured in some of the chai (whitened with heavy cream, only a little cream), then sprinkled on some pumpkin seeds and added these fat juicy blackberries, and some blueberries.



Yumm.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I finally made a baby bok choy dish turn out the way I want it, like Asian restaurants make it taste, and even better than the Central Market deli version.

As I mentioned, on my shopping expedition the other day I found another 3-pack of the organic baby bok. Now I wish I'd gotten two or three packs.



I washed it thoroughly to get out the dirt between the leaves. I would call this cooking process a steam blanch, because I used very little water and did it quick. I wanted them crisp tender. I added no salt. The other ingredients have salt. Drained them in the colander, and rinsed the pan.



Returned the pan to heat, added a ton of crushed garlic (garlic is life), about three tablespoons chili crisp, and let the garlic toast in the oil. Then added organic tamari to de-glaze the pan, and a tablespoon of maple syrup. Then added back the drained bok choy and tossed with tongs to get it all coated.

Here it is done:



OMG I could eat that sauce all day. I hope not to accidentally eat the whole dish before dinner. If it makes it to dinner, I'll accompany it with a bowl of, what else, ramen, probably using some of the same ingredients.

EDIT: Well yep, I accidentally ate it. All of it. As I began noshing, I felt it did need some salt for that much veg. Otherwise, excellent through and through.

 

[Jimi]

I finally made a baby bok choy dish turn out the way I want it, like Asian restaurants make it taste, and even better than the Central Market deli version.

As I mentioned, on my shopping expedition the other day I found another 3-pack of the organic baby bok. Now I wish I'd gotten two or three packs.

View attachment 217458

I washed it thoroughly to get out the dirt between the leaves. I would call this cooking process a steam blanch, because I used very little water and did it quick. I wanted them crisp tender. I added no salt. The other ingredients have salt. Drained them in the colander, and rinsed the pan.

View attachment 217459

Returned the pan to heat, added a ton of crushed garlic (garlic is life), about three tablespoons chili crisp, and let the garlic toast in the oil. Then added organic tamari to de-glaze the pan, and a tablespoon of maple syrup.

Here it is done:

View attachment 217460

OMG I could eat that sauce all day. I hope not to accidentally eat the whole dish before dinner. If it makes it to dinner, I'll accompany it with a bowl of, what else, ramen, probably using some of the same ingredients.

MMM that looks super my friend

 

[Bliss Doubt]

MMM that looks super my friend

I edited to say it does need some salt at the end.

 

[Jimi]

I edited to say it does need some salt at the end.

it looks delicious

 

[Jimi]

I couldn't resist makin some of these


Started w/young zuke sliced about 3/16 inch thick then added the goodies



Added some plant based cheese the heated them about half done then

put them back in the oven till they looked like this.
These are so delicious and the zuce gives it a sweet tastin crust

 

[SirKadly]

If anybody is serving guac (or I suppose it could work for other things as well) at a Halloween party this year, I saw an amusing serving idea.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

There are Asian dishes that are candy, like orange chicken, sweet & sour pork, things like that. A diabetic couldn't eat those.

But that's just to understand that a sweet dish is nothing unusual. There is a YouTube cooking trend going on, ginger ale ramen. I had to try it because it's ridiculous, but it also looks delicious when people make it on their YT channels. I don't think it's really necessary. The long way around is to just mince your fresh ginger and garlic, get out your tamari and your sesame oil, and get busy. A little sugar or maple syrup would add that sweet touch.

But I had to try the ginger ale concoction, and look what I found just at the right moment:



You have to squinch your eyes to see where it says "organic". For those unfamiliar with the difference between ginger ale and ginger beer, the ginger beer usually has a stronger ginger flavor and less sweetness. Generally it is not an alcoholic beverage, though I'm sure there are some with alcohol content. The one I used doesn't have alcohol. The bottles are small, 6.8 oz., just the right amount to make ramen for one with some water added to make the ramen soupy.

So first I set little piles of organic white sesame seeds and sliced almonds to toast in the oven just a few minutes, while I toasted the crushed garlic in the chili crisp in a pan on the stove. Then flooded the pan with organic tamari, then the bottle of ginger beer. When it came back to a simmer, added the noodles. Done, I topped the dish with broccolini heads, sliced green onion, some fresh basil leaves, the sesame seeds and almonds. This was my breakfast-lunch today:



It was delish!

 

[Jimi]

I have been gettin a few extra tomatoes so I took a few of these meaty maters (Amish paste maters) and peeled them
if you've never had these they are super meaty and sweet but still have that good old time mater taste

Then cut them up, here you can see just how meaty they are and very few seeds




Then in the pot they went with a few big thick slices of onion
I cooked it till onions were translucent and then tried usin a hand blender thingy
it didn't work so I had to put them in a food processer and grind it all up
then back into the pan with:
Organic mustard seed powder
Organic garlic powder, since I didn't have fresh today
Organic allspice
Organic basil
Organic maple syrup, small amount
Organic onion powder, I wasn't sure if I used enough onion so added powder
Organic Plant based butter Myc.
And a dash of salt
then I cooked it for about 2 hours on pretty high heat to render it down

Here's what it cooked down to
after a good cookin and coolin down I dished up a bowl to try

there's still small pieces of onion and mater in it.
After tryin it I swear this is the best and by far the most flavorful mater soup I have ever eaten in my entire life and pretty easy to make.

Ok some of you might be wonderin why doesn't he just open a can of soup.
Well I can't eat canned mater soup or canned maters because of my disease. Actually it's bad for everyone because of the spray lining they spray in the cans, mater acid attacks it and makes it leach into the food. AND most of all the taste cannot be matched

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I moved my spaghetti squash supper to the Diet Tips & Tricks thread, for reasons that will be very obvious when you read the calorie content.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Farewell to summer.

With petroleum powered transport we get foods out of the seasons we understood when the world was simpler. Dunno about you, but here in south Texas we get a lot of produce from Mexico, and it is very high quality. Fresh corn is in the stores all year, but none of the fresh corn is organic, so for organic I buy these frozen organic mini-cobs. The package says "product of Mexico":



All of that is the long way around showing my farewell summer breakfast-lunch today. I wanted to make cajun corn, which is a restaurant trend lately. I had some recently, yeesh what a mouth watering addiction! I had to make it. Didn't want to buy five jars of various spices to make my own blend, so I bought Central Market organic cajun seasoning blend:


stock photo

Rolled the cobs in melted butter, baked until browned, then hot out of the oven sprinkled with the cajun seasoning. I threw some of the spice on the leftover potatoes I had too:



And the other sorrowful farewell of summer:



We have solstice and equinox markers of seasons, but I believe for most of us summer is the months when we were out of school, June-July-August. We had a mild summer this year here in SA, while I saw others writing of harsh high temps. Nonetheless I look forward to that first nip in the air and the cool breezes of autumn. I didn't make it to the ocean this summer, but I made it to friends' pools a couple of times.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Yes I have gone totally insane. I want to look my best for a party later this month, so what do I do? Make cinnamon sugar biscuits from canned biscuits. There are a million recipes for it on YT, pretty much all the same.

I had a brand new bottle of cinnamon. The old one, not used often enough, was starting to taste like sawdust, so I pitched it and bought this:


(stock photo)

You have to use the biscuits that have flaky layers, so you can peel each biscuit into two halves. I used this one, organic, no bad seed oils:


(stock photo)

The recipes always show dipping each biscuit half into melted butter, then drenching it in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar, but then you see the person dealing with clumpy greasy cinnamon sugar. I felt that just having plenty of melted butter in the pan would be enough to make them rich, so I melted the butter, peeled each biscuit into halves, dredged each half in cinnamon sugar, stacked them back together two by two, and baked at 350, about 18 minutes I think. It took longer than I expected.

And I borrowed a screen shot from the YouTube vid because when I wanted to take a pic of mine, my phone battery was dead. This is how mine look:



These really are delicious. That cinnamon is fabulous. My apartment smells so cozy yummy. Wish I could give everybody one of these. I'm not going to eat them all myself, even though they are my only supper. The skinny guy across the hall is in for a treat.

 

[Burnie]

Smoking a Brisket today.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I found this recipe on YouTube, wonderfully refreshing and delicious, such a treat. If you do it right, I believe it's suitable for a holiday table, better than that canned fruit & marshmallows salad.

I'm not listing ingredients, because it depends on how much you want to make.

First, spread your little pile of sliced almonds or pecans on a baking sheet, and crisp them up at 350 degrees for just a few minutes. Let them cool.

Wash and drain your grapes and pat them dry. The recipe called for red and green seedless grapes, but for organic, my grocery store had only the red seedless in stock.



Make your dressing, a mixture of equal parts sour cream and Neufchatel (low fat cream cheese), a little bit of maple syrup*, dash of vanilla, a little grated ginger or ginger powder, to taste, or cinnamon instead, mix it all up, then thin it out with a little milk, plant milk, cream or even water, just to make it a consistency that will easily toss with your grapes. Taste and see if it needs salt.

*Whenever I mention maple syrup in a recipe, I mean real, pure maple syrup, NOT pancake syrup. Pancake syrup has all sorts of bad ingredients, and is flavored with artificial maple flavoring. If that's all you have, substitute some honey or sugar.

Top with the cooled toasted nuts.

Yum yum, yumyumyum (but I forgot to sprinkle on the nuts before taking pics). My dinner tonite:



Okay, the mistake I made was making too much dressing right in the salad bowl, and then adding in the grapes. There's no backing out of excessive dressing when you do it that way, other than adding a few more grapes. I suggest making the dressing on the side, and adding as much as you feel is right. But I didn't mind. I could eat a bowl of that dressing by itself.

 

[SirKadly]

Stuffed Pepper Crockpot Soup - day 2 is even better than day 1, sorry, no pics but I'm gonna make this several times between now and spring so maybe next time.

Should be able to substitute anything you can't or don't want to include for dietary reasons or personal preference.

Sautee
1 medium onion
2lbs Italian sausage (1lb sweet, 1lb hot)
garlic

Mix above ingredients in crockpot with the following
32oz beef broth
30oz tomato sauce
30oz fire roasted diced tomatoes, with liquid
seasonings of your preference

Cook on low for 8 hours. About midway through the cooking time add 4 chopped bell peppers
If you are trying to cook this while you are at work or otherwise away from home, the peppers can be added from the start. I just prefer not to cook them quite that long.


Almost forgot to add this.
Cook rice separately per directions to add to individual servings in the bowl. For storing leftovers you won't want rice in the soup as the rice will absorb it.

 

[CrazyChef v2.0]

I've never made a deep-dish apple pie before. It's 2:30am and I just took it out of the oven. But apparently I have to wait 3 hours for it to cool off and set up properly before I can slice into it. Guess who's having pie for breakfast?

I also have some caramel swirl vanilla ice cream in the freezer that I think will go great with the pie!

 

[Bliss Doubt]

The no-spend challenge

My main reason to stay alive is food, not kidding. Sex is good, but quality sex is not easy to come by if you don't like sharing and want to stay single. Food. If I had a daily diet of bread and tea, it would still be worth staying alive for, but the choices we have, the inspirations found online and from friends and restaurants, to learn, to experiment, try new things, cause me to over-buy, and sadly, disrespectfully, let partially used ingredients spoil and rot while I'm onto the next thing.

Then there is "prepping" (hoarding), which means you have to be careful to eat up ahead of expiration dates. Late in the year, when all of the holiday food ideas are coming out, is the same time you have to get serious about eating up the stored foods you already have. I know, such a first world problem.

But I'm doing the no-spend initiative this week, using up what I have, using my own ideas, no shopping allowed.

Thing one: those frozen organic avocado chunks. We continue to hear about a coming global power outage (thanks, globalists). If it does happen, your expensive frozen and refrigerated organic ingredients will be the saddest losses.

Day 1 no-spend breakfast-lunch:

I wanted to use some of that frozen avocado to make cottage cheese salad with organic ranch powder, cucumber and black olives, a fave salad from my childhood. I had a packet of spicy ranch dressing mix that was opened a long time ago and never finished, those avo chunks, a can of Lindsay organic black olives with expiry date next month, baby cukes starting to get mushy spots, and half a small container of cottage cheese that was in the fridge a while, but still smelled fresh.

How to efficiently use those frozen avocado chunks? If you eat the whole bag it's 450 calories. What did I do last time? Probably used a whole bag to make something for dinner guests. This time I banged the frozen bag on the counter to break up the contents, removed approx. half to thaw for my salad, sealed up the rest and put them back in the freezer.

So I let the avo chunks thaw for about an hour, trimmed and chopped the cukes, sliced a few of the olives, scraped the cottage cheese into a bowl, stirred in some of the ranch powder (there is even still a lot of the powder remaining in the packet after that). I had some fresh organic dill in the fridge, starting to turn brown, a few unspoiled green fronds remaining, so I added those. Then in with all the veg for a final stir-up.

In childhood we sprinkled Fritos on top of the serving to eat. I ate mine today with some of my over-supply of organic tortilla chips, and washed it all down with the juice saved from a can of juice-pack pineapple I needed for yesterday's lunch concoction.

So delish, no pic. I ate late, and it took so long to thaw the avos and prepare the salad, I was a poor starving skeleton.

No-spend dinner later this evening: Leftover pizza reheated.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I just watched a YouTube vid of someone cooking with an Instant Pot for the first time. It appears to be the most ridiculous, cheaply made, fussy, dangerous contraption you could have in the kitchen, with good alternatives already in existence. I don't understand the need for those air fryers either. I see people spraying the bottom with oil. Then obviously you would think it has to go in the dishwasher or be hand washed afterwards. Can't you just oil a pan, add your food and put it in the oven?

 

[Bliss Doubt]

No-spend challenge


Day 2 no-spend breakfast-lunch: Grape salad again, but different than the first one I posted a little over two weeks ago. I used up some more of the Neufchatel from the first time, but this time used some mayo to loosen up the dressing instead of sour cream, plus about a tablespoon of cream. Instead of the teaspoon of maple syrup I used last time, this time I used some leftover cinnamon sugar I found in the fridge from my cinnamon biscuit recipe experiment a month ago, plus a pinch of ginger powder, and a little salt. It can be made with no sweetener of any kind if you prefer. This time I stirred up my dressing in a separate bowl from the grapes, to avoid excessive drenching.

I washed and drained the grapes, toasted a little pile of chopped pecans from a 2 oz. bag that expired LAST YEAR. I found them in a jar in the cabinet where I stash open packages of chocolate chips, raisins and other things. The pecans still tasted snappy fresh so I used them. My groceries last week included organic celery. I'm determined not to let that rot, so I sliced some up to add to the grapes. Also added a handful of blackberries I found at the back of the fridge. That's the shame of over-buying food. You lose track of really good stuff already in the fridge.



Salad done and dressed, I sprinkled on the cooled pecans. I'm happily munching now.




Day 2 no-spend dinner this evening will be the last of the leftover pizza in the fridge. I'm a little tired of it, but I don't want to throw it out or give it freezer space. Thin crust pizza dries out in the fridge, so to the last slices I'll add some grated mozz before reheating.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Day 3 no-spend breakfast-lunch

Wedge salad, deconstructed - I had a head of organic iceberg starting to brown on the outer leaves, unopened because I'd not yet finished the previous head. Ain't this pretty:



So I peeled the rust and rot from both. I was never so happy to put out the trash. As with all of my wrongs and bad habits, I find that focusing, thinking it through, doing better, makes me feel better.

The pretty wedge, topped with the usual ingredients, bleu cheese, bacon bits, dressing, is easily eaten in a restaurant, where you have it on a plate with a knife and fork. I deconstructed it for home consumption by tearing up the lettuce, and served myself in a bowl, easier since I mostly eat at my desk. After this I still have quite a bit of lettuce left. So glad it's rescued.

Fully cooked bacon in the sealed packages will keep without refrigeration for months. I need to get through some of that prepper supply. There are many brands, but the best one IMO is Jack's Links. The label says "bacon jerky" but it's nothing more than cooked bacon strips. They reheat easily in the oven for just a minute or two, and give off their grease to be blotted off. They go great with a martini (your friends' eyes will pop out when you put out a plate of warm bacon strips next to the martini shaker and the olives). Also good on a BLT sandwich, an avocado sandwich, or alongside your eggs. I'm not saying bacon is a great healthful food, but there are things I consider for prepping that I don't think of for my daily diet.

I had some high quality bleu cheese ignored in the fridge for way too long, but bleu keeps a long time. Mixed some of that with some mayo, Dijon mustard, freshly ground pepper and some red pepper flakes. Plop, on top of the lettuce. Tossed, topped with the bacon, and I'm a happy frugal muncher right now.



Not seen, after taking the pic I added some packaged organic croutons that expired a few months ago. They're still fresh and crisp, no mold, still good.

I still have prepper bacon to finish off, but hey, at least I've still never bought Spam for my prepper supplies.

Day 3 no-spend supper tonite will be some leftover taquitos I found in the fridge, reheated, with salsa and a single serving cup of organic Wholly Avocado, only ingredients avocado and sea salt. You get 16 servings in the box at Costco, so I keep them in the freezer.

It turns out to be fun, this no-spend initiative. Even when I am finally pressed to get groceries, it will be only for basic additions, such as sour cream, store made fresh salsa, bread/buns, maybe some tomatoes, but I don't think I'll need a grocery run for at least another week, maybe two.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Day 4 no-spend breakfast-lunch

The consideration was to stay ahead of the sour cream getting old, but my prepper supplies do include lots of Vigo rice & beans. Currently I'm almost through a 12-pack of the black beans & rice. They were less than 2.00 per package (2-3 meals) when I bought them to store. So I made some up today with all the good toppings. Vigo is much tastier than the Iberia brand, and pretty low in calories, so I make one package at a time, according to the directions. The package is fairly well seasoned, but I add some red pepper flakes, crushed garlic and thyme. It makes four cups, so I eat what I want and the rest goes in the fridge for next meal or the next day, or both. Dished the serving into a bowl, then plop, the sour cream, plop, a single serve cup Wholly Avocado, a spoonful of salsa, all topped with some organic crispy onions. You can't even see the rice & beans under all the toppings:



Day 4 no-spend supper tonite will be a shrivelly apple I found in the crisper bin, no rot, so probably still good under the skin, with some organic PB2 (peanut butter with the calories removed) for dipping, a couple of celery sticks too with that PB. Or I may skip dinner because I'm going to a friend's house for movie nite and there will probably be lots of snacks. I'll take something I already have (no spend) to contribute, maybe a bag of Lundberg organic mini rice cakes in the apple pie flavor.

I haven't mentioned desserts during the no-spend challenge, but I do still have a small dessert most evenings. In supply are mini-ice cream sandwiches currently, the aforementioned apple pie mini rice cakes, high quality chocolate bars, always, and a couple of boxes of these:

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Day 5 no-spend breakfast-lunch

This premium Bellwether yogurt was the thing I really didn't want to lose to expiration:



And I'm doing a good job of eating the organic celery instead of letting it rot.

I invented peanut butter yogurt. I didn't use up the whole container of yogurt, only about 3/4 cup, stirred in some organic PB2 powder until thoroughly mixed.



I chopped in the shrivelly apple I mentioned yesterday, no soft spots or rot, so it was fine, along with a couple of ribs of celery sliced. Very good.

Day 5 no-spend supper (later on)

Last night at movie nite we decided we haven't had supper club in a while, so we should do it next weekend. I volunteered to host it. I knew what all is in my kitchen, and I knew that even if I'm still doing no-spend by then, I can still manage an entree. I told everybody about my no-spend challenge, and they loved it, and will try to bring no-spend food themselves.

So today I did a test recipe for no-spend tuna pot pie. Here are some of my ingredients:



In a pot I mixed two cans cream of mushroom soup, undiluted, two cans mushrooms drained, two cans tuna drained, two ribs celery thinly sliced, a glug of Worcestershire sauce, some frozen baby peas, the last tablespoon or so remaining in the packet of organic spicy ranch powder, thyme, salt, freshly ground black pepper and some red pepper flakes. Heated it through.

I greased my pan with melted butter, added the mixture. Topped it with the crescent rolls opened out flat, and brushed the crust generously with melted butter. Put the pie in a 375 degree oven and marked my time for 25 minutes, but I peeked at it a little earlier than that, and it was done.



I had to have a small serving as a taste test, didn't I? Is that a good enough excuse?



It is delicious, but because I like the crust more than what's underneath it, and I think most people do, next weekend I'll make the pot mixture half, just one can of everything.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Day 6 no-spend breakfast-lunch: Was leftover tuna pot pie from yesterday.

Day 6 no-spend dinner tonite: Will be leftover rice and beans from the day before yesterday, which I'll use to make tacos in corn shells with some shredded cheese and some of the lettuce I rescued a few days ago, salsa. If they turn out pretty I'll come back and add a pic.

EDIT: As promised I'm back with pics. The tacos turned out just like I like 'em.

I used some shredded cheese instead of just plopping on some sour cream or guac or both, to avoid losing cheese to mold. Any of the individually tightly sealed snack size cheese portions last longer than the block or bar of cheese, but even these will get moldy edges after too long.



So I grated a couple of them. The leftover rice & beans were too congealed to spice up, so I added just a little water to the container before reheating, and hot out of the oven added some ground cumin and chili powder, stirred well and ran them back in the oven for a few minutes more. Here are my tacos. There are three of them on the plate. I put the cheese grater behind them to hold them all up together:



So at this point I'll do the real Tex-Mex cooking lesson. A beef taco shouldn't have cheese on it. That's a protein glut and a waste of food, though the fast food places are happy to glut you up and overfeed you. Cheese belongs on a beany dish, like these rice-bean tacos (which actually won't occur in Mexico at all), or a bean chalupa or quesadilla.

There's a YouTube vlog channel I discovered recently, and it bears me out, "Touch of light homestead in Mexico". It's about a family that moved to Mexico after the father couldn't get his US citizenship even after attending college and working in the US, marrying and having children here. He relocated his family to the farming area of Mexico that he came from, where his mom still lives, where the whole village is called "the rancho", where people walk their children to school every day, then go back to take them a hot lunch, then go back and walk them home at the end of the school day. The family walks to the plaza to get freshly made tortillas every morning. All foods are sourced from local shops, bakeries, dairy outlets, the local butcher. The videos show the family's walks past corn fields, corn growing in peoples yards, naturally occurring flowering vines arching over gates and doors, wild tomatillos popping up wherever they plant themselves, chickens in the roads, the beautiful mountains in the background. Everybody walks to the plaza for evening outings, to visit with friends in the fresh air.

Cooking and restaurant foods are a prominent feature of the channel. The culture is very much like what I grew up with, even in suburban SA. Hispanic girls here have their quinceañera parties at age 15, which is sometimes referred to as a "debut". The quinceañera has really escalated into something quite overblown, with giant hoop skirted ball gowns you can hardly move around in. Anyway, some of the group and line dances are similar to things we did when I grew up here. The boys in black pants, black shirts and black cowboy hats make my heart go thumpity.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Day 7 no-spend breakfast-lunch

The struggle continues between greed and mindfulness. I really want some Mexican food, but will allow no food spending until I use up what I have that may be in danger of spoiling.

I have some soft cream cheese spread pretentiously called "Herb & Garlic Eurocreme" from the brand "Life in Provence" (made in USA). It was on sale when I bought it quite a while ago. When I pulled it out of the fridge to check the expiration date, I couldn't find one on either the cardboard sleeve or the tub inside. It smells and tastes fine, so onward.

I used a calorie measured portion of pasta (310), boiled as usual with a little salt, drained and stirred in some of that garlic-herb "Eurocreme", butter, red pepper flakes and a few frozen baby peas. It's delish, it's breakfast-lunch.



Day 7 no-spend dinner tonite will be tacos again, using the last of the leftover rice and beans.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

Day 8 no-spend breakfast-lunch

In trying to keep ahead of rot and expiration dates, I don't know how I didn't notice the bag of organic russets at the back of the fridge, and now they've gotten another week older. Potatoes keep a long time in the fridge, but I think the nutrition begins to degrade when they start sprouting. There were a very few little short sprouts here and there, which came off easily with the peeler. I made curry mash with peas, one of my favorite dishes, with butter, garlic, salt, red pepper flakes and curry powder:



Day 8 no-spend dinner tonite will be leftover curry mash. I don't think I could ever get tired of it.

And with that, I think I've got a grip. There are still more taters in the fridge, and canned goods expiring in 2024, still some cheese and other dairy to be consumed ahead of spoilage, but I think I'm caught up enough, the fridge emptied out enough, to make me aware enough of what's here, that I can break tomorrow and get some Mexican food. After that I'll return to no-spending, but won't report my journey here anymore.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

If you're a prepper, and even if you're not, this is a bread to want. It's very high quality, and keeps a long time without refrigeration, tightly wrapped in thick, sealed plastic wrap. I bought two loaves on September 20, and the "use by" date is August 7 of 2025, almost a year. This is just a screen shot and the ingredients typed underneath:



Organic Whole Kernel Rye, Water, Organic Wholemeal Rye Flour, Organic Oat, Organic Barley, Organic Linseed, Sea Salt, Organic Sesame, Yeast.

In spite of the rye ingredients, it doesn't taste like rye bread to me at all. Maybe because of the oat, barley and sesame content, the rye is mellowed out of it, so It tastes like whole wheat or multigrain bread. Anyway, I'm not prepping any more, just working through supplies, but I needed bread right now, with no time to get groceries. So I opened one of the packages to make a grilled cheese sandwich, yum.

It's just a small loaf, 17.6 oz., pre-sliced into 7 long slices, each slice 160 calories, so what I do is cut the loaf in half to get regular size bread, 14 slices, each 80 calories.



And here's my grilled cheese sammy:

 

[SirKadly]

OK, I'm not cooking right now, but I saw this and I really want one of these. And now I'm thinking that I might have to make some B&G in the near future.

 

[CrazyChef v2.0]

Well, it's that time of year again! Time to make my Jordan Marsh recipe blueberry muffins with extra cranberries!

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I made pineapple curry for breakfast-lunch today. It was so good. Tons of leftovers for tomorrow because I made a lot.

I finally found an organic chili crisp. It costs about a dollar more per jar than the non-organic, and the ingredients are much more pleasing:



Organic oil blend Sunflower Oil, Olive Oil, Sesame Oil, Organic Chili, Organic Garlic, Organic Onion, Organic Spices, Organic Flavorings, Pink Salt.

So, my recipe:

Two tablespoons chili crisp
Tablespoon ginger paste
Half an onion, sliced
Two 8 oz. packets cooked organic brown basmatic rice
The big 20 oz can juice packed pineapple chunks (don't drain them right away)
Small can organic sliced mushrooms, drained
Crowns cut from a small bunch broccolini (sometimes called baby broccoli)
Quarter cup roasted salted peanuts
Tablespoon curry powder
High quality soy or tamari sauce
Salt

Add the chilli crisp and ginger paste to the pan, get them sizzling. Add the onion, stir until it starts to get soft and translucent. The onion doesn't have to cook all the way thru. Lower the heat when it gets scary.

Flood the pan with the juice from the can of pineapple, and the soy sauce. Add the rice. It's clumpy so it takes some patience to turn it over and break it apart, not too roughly because you want pretty, whole grains of rice. During this process add the curry powder. Maybe add a little water if you need more juice in the pan, though I didn't have to.

Taste for salt, add if necessary.

Once the rice is all softened and broken up to regular consistency, add the broccolini, the pineapple chunks and the mushrooms. Sprinkle on the peanuts. Stir it all up, heat through. The canned mushrooms are already cooked The broccolini will soften to tender crisp just in the heat of the dish.

Taste again for salt.

 

[Burnie]

 

[CrazyChef v2.0]

Not really cooking, per se, but I have this meat grinder attachment for the KitchenAid that I’ve never used. This pork roast was on sale for an unbeatable price, so I figured it’s time to put the grinder to good use. That, plus it’s almost impossible to find ground pork for sale around here for some stupid reason. At least ground pork that hasn’t been turned into sausage.

I cut the pork up into small chunks that will feed into the grinder and gave them a slight freeze to keep the grinder from overheating from friction. I’m told it grinds better this way.

Ground it all up, vacuum sealed it into 9oz portions, and off to the freezer it goes!

If you have one of these grinder attachments you’ll notice in the last picture that I have the machine tilted slightly forward. That’s to keep any excess juices from flowing back into the head of the mixer and becoming rancid. Nobody wants a mixer full of maggots!!!

 

[Jimi]

I can't eat much store bought foods because of my disease which only leaves makin it yourself so I made vegan mushroom soup that ended to be the very best mushroom soup I have ever ate in all my life.
Here's what I did:
the night before I soaked 1/2 cup of organic cashews in water
IN a stock pot I added 1/4 cup organic olive oli
1/2 tsp. each all organic of thyme, dry basil, crushed rosemary, parsley, then add 1 tablespoon Tamari or a good soy sauce
600 grams of mushrooms (chopped) I used white organic button mushrooms
then saute till water is evaporated and mushrooms have turned color
then add i large onion and 3 cloves of garlic finely chopped to pot
saute till onions are translucent
then take half of the mix in pot out leavin the other half
then put cashews and 1/2 cup vegetable broth or water in blender and blend into a paste ( takes about 3 min.)
Then pour paste into stock pot with the other half of mushroom mix (don't worry about cleanin it out cause we are gonna use it again right now)
then put the half of the mix that you took out and put it in the blender and blend till smooth
pour that mix into stock soy and add 2 cups of veggie broth or water heat and stir for 10 min and serve.








It's thick creamy and is the VERY best mushroom soup I have ever ate. I can't wait till morel season

 

[Bliss Doubt]

I got the best deals on organic stuff from Dash Mart. Even after the driver tip, it beat grocery store prices with a big stick. The next day I got another delivery of most of the same items.

Organic cherry tomatoes on the vine 3.89/lb
Essential Baking Co. organic take & bake sourdough loaf 4.99
Organic pasture raised hard boiled eggs 4.89/doz
Organic Valley mozzarella stringles 6.89
Organic fresh basil 2.09 (!!!!!!!!)
Organic baby arugula 3.69 for a HUGE box
Nature's Path organic dark chocolate peanut butter granola 7.59
Organic tortilla chips, 2 bags for 6.49
One Stroop Club organic chai caramel stroopwafel 1.49
1 can organic diced green chiles 2.39

So what did I do next? Started letting it go to waste. The basil is already starting to wilt and turn brown, gawd.

Don't ask me what I was doing at Popeye's last night. They have a chocolate chip biscuit with icing drizzled on it. Dry and crumbly, total waste of money, and I have an itch now from the chicken (which admittedly is delish).

Then, early this morning I tore open that chocolate peanut butter granola and had an extra cheat day on it, with milk I made from pouring a little cream into water. My intermittent fasting schedule usually does not include a meal that early, even on a cheat day, so it gave me a huge bellyache. After clutching my gut for an hour, and enough farts to take out the ozone layer, I fell asleep in my big chair, and woke up hungry again. This time I became a good person again, used up some of those cherry tomatoes, rescued basil that was still good, cut up some of the sourdough into cubes, added some of the baby arugula, some balsamic and some torn up stringles, salt and red pepper flakes, for a small bread salad.

I will not waste food. Will not waste food. Will not.