Monday’s Receipt

Stopped by the Pioneer last night instead of the Coop because: 1) it was gross out 2) the Coop after a major food holiday (i.e., Thanksgiving) on a Monday night is not something to be reckoned with.  Just got a couple of things to tide us over for dinner (which was frozen soup, thawed), but thought I would put up the receipt because of the excellent spelling.

$ left for the week: $26.74

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

What are you doing with your leftovers?

Homemade Ginger-ale

This has helped soothe my stomach for the past couple of days and is certainly cheaper than store bought.  Wish I could say the same for crackers, but I didn’t want to deal with making homemade crackers.  Phil gave a very good general idea for how to make the ginger ale (as well as soothing ginger tea) in his last post, but here are some measurements.  Increase/decrease at will.

Homemade Ginger-ale

Ingredients:

• 1 cup peeled and chopped ginger
• 1 cup water
• 3/4 cup sugar
• lemon zest from a lemon (I just peel the skin with a vegetable peeler and avoid the pith)
• seltzer water

To Do:

1. Bring the ginger, water, sugar and lemon peel to a boil and let simmer until a thick syrup forms (about 10 minutes, constant stirring).
2. Let cool and strain into a container.
3. Mix the syrup with seltzer and taste.  Start with a little and add more until you get the desired ginger effect.
4. Drink w/ice (or not).

This is NOT exactly like commercial ginger-ale, but if you like ginger and drinking something delicious, give it a shot.

I am sure the ginger syrup would taste delicious in a variety of cocktails, but I won’t be partaking for a while.

 

 

Tummy Troubles

Tina has been struck down with some sort of stomach bug for the last couple of days, which has somewhat limited our cooking options. However, it has given us reason to produce a lot of stomach-soothing homemade herbal beverages, largely focused around ginger.

Boiling up a pot of water with just a handful of peeled, sliced ginger root will get you a warm and comforting ginger tea. Add a bit of sugar as it’s boiling if you prefer sweet tea. You can also add fresh mint, which is supposed to be good for the stomach (though not, apparently if you have heartburn).

Another option is to make some homemade ginger ale. For this, you’ll first need to make ginger syrup by boiling up equal parts sugar and water, also with peeled, sliced ginger. After letting the mixture boil for a few minutes, allow to cool, then mix a bit of syrup with seltzer to taste and you’ve got ginger ale. Store the extra syrup in the fridge, keeping the bits of ginger in for extra flavor.

If anybody has other stomach soothing suggestions, or ideas for fantastic bratt diet recipes, we’re all ears.

Noodle Frittata

The other day we made some pasta with vegetables and tempeh for dinner.  We ended up making a lot more than expected and I decided to create a pasta “frittata” for brunch.

This came out surprisingly well and was a welcome addition to our weekend brunch repertoire.

Noodle Frittata

Ingredients:

• a bunch of leftover pasta
• olive oil
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• various spices of your choosing

To Do:

1. Preheat your oven to 375F.
2. Mix together the eggs, milk, salt, pepper and various spices of your choosing.
3. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in an oven-safe skillet (cast iron rules!) and place the pasta in it.
4. Stir the pasta a bit until it heats up.
5. Pour the egg mixture over the top of the pasta and distribute it throughout the mixture evenly.  Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on top.
6. Place the skillet in the oven and bake until the top is golden brown – about 15 minutes or so.
7. Serve!

Home Sick

Saltines cost $3.54!!  Crazy.  This is why we don’t buy prepared food!

Also bought a bag of onions for $1.50 and couple of rolls ($1).

Total so far this week: $6.04

This Week’s Receipt

We had $1.47 leftover from last week, so the Liz Lovely Cookie was an indulgence.  Combined with the $1 we spent last night on some bread and the $1.77 we spent on Monday night, our total this week is: $12.91.  We have $18.56 left.

 

Spaghetti Squash: Seeds and All

Our receipt from Tuesday night’s shop needs to be put up on the site, but one of the items we got was a spaghetti squash.  This dish came together pretty quickly with some items we had in the fridge and the cupboard.  The protein powerhouse here was a pound of (dried) garbanzo beans that I made in the pressure cooker on Friday and stored in the fridge.

Spaghetti Squash: Seeds and All

Ingredients:

• 1 medium-sized spaghetti squash
• 1 cup cooked garbanzo beans
• 1 small red onion (diced)
• olive oil
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• crushed red pepper & garlic powder
• freshly ground black pepper and salt
• 1 cup of red wine

To Do:

1. Chop the top and very bottom of the squash off and split the squash in half.
2. Remove seeds and strands from squash.  Wash the seeds and place on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper and toast for 10 minutes in a 350F oven or until they are all brown and crispy
3. In the meantime, prick squash halves with a knife and fill a microwavable dish with a half-inch of water.  Place one half of the squash in it (if you can fit both halves, go for it) and microwave for about 7-8 minutes.  If you want to roast the squash, preheat the oven to 375 and place squash halves in a rimmed baking sheet with water on the bottom.  Roast for about an hour or until squash is tender.
4. Use a fork and comb out the squash halves – the strands should come out looking a bit like spaghetti.  Place in a bowl and cover to keep warm.
5. Heat up olive oil in a skillet and add the chopped onions.  Saute the onions for 5 minutes on medium heat and then add a 1/4 cup of wine.  Cover skillet and lower the heat to a simmer – cook for 5 minutes and add the parsley and garbanzo beans.
6. Add the rest of the wine, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste and cover.  Let this simmer for a little bit – it’ll be your sauce.
7. Heat up the spaghetti squash in the microwave for a minute or two.   Alternatively, add the squash to the garbanzo mixture and heat it all over the stove.
8. Top with the garbanzo mixture, Parmesan cheese and the toasted squash seeds.
9. Enjoy!

Pears Rombola

Our good friends, the sisters Rombola, came down from Boston last weekend (we’ve filed 30/w field reports with them before) and brought the fixins for this terrific dessert. Here’s how they did it:

[The pears] were peeled halved and cored, then thrown in a container with some farm-fresh apple cider, brown sugar and the scraped vanilla bean (scraped so the seeds are all freed from the pod, we threw the pod in too), lemon juice and lemon zest. They sat in that the whole ride down…I’m sure they didn’t have to stay in there so long.

I dotted it with butter before baking [ed. about a 1/4" cube on each pear.].

The pears were baked in a casserole dish at 350 for about…20 minutes? Just check on them periodically for texture. There was a lot of liquid left after cooking, which made them particularly good to serve over a piece of Gooey Butter Cake that had been made a couple of days prior and and was therefore a bit on the dry side (bonus points for successfully reinvigorating dessert leftovers). Also featured were one small scoop each of vanilla and dulce de leche ice cream.

*Addendum: Butternut Squash Casserole

Not expecting much, I made this the other night and it exceeded my expectations.  Really good as a dinner with a salad on the side or equally delicious for breakfast the next day.  It was hard to decide whether the leftovers should be breakfast or lunch.

I got the original recipe from the NY Times and tweaked it a bit (used goat cheese instead of Gruyere, 4 eggs instead of 3 and soymilk).  I also roasted the squash the day before since our oven was being used for something or other and baking it before hand really cut the prep time…a lot.  Enjoy!

Weekly spending: $1.77 (head of lettuce and daikon radish)

*As a commenter noted, this can be sweet (some squashes are sweet than others and butternut squash gets nice and sweet if you roast it), and I actually added a LOT of parsley and a bit of chopped spinach to the mixture as well.