Jam and Jelly - Not Just for Toast

Unless you are a huge fan of toast and jelly, canning your own jams and jellies may not make sense for you.  Or does it?  I used to be very narrow minded when it came to jelly or jam.  It goes on toast.  End of story.  But wait up, it doesn't have to be so cut and dry.  Jams and jellies can also be ingredients in delicious dishes. 

I don't know why I never thought of it before.  It wasn't until a recent cleaning out of the cabinets that I even considered it.  I am currently taking a short break from canning and decided it was time to move this year's jars off the dining room table and into the cabinets. 

This meant evaluating what was left over from last year - a couple of jars of sloppy joe sauce and four jars of strawberry jam. 

The strawberry jam stressed me out a little.  Honestly, I thought what a waste.  We are not big toast and jam eaters so in my mind I already saw myself dumping out the jam straight into the garbage.  Then I started thinking, "What else can I do with this stuff?".  Would you believe that Allrecipes returned 100+ hits to the ingredient search for strawberry jam?  Seriously.  You do have to go to the second page though before you start seeing it as an ingredient.

I decided to make Strawberries and Cream Pie.  It sounded easy peasy and I had most all the ingredients on hand.  Happy to say that it turned out yummy.  

Best of all, I have one less jar of jam to worry about ;)

Not to say that too much food on hand is a bad thing, I just prefer to use up canned goods within the year for best quality assurance.

So now I am wondering what else I can can for this year that would be purposed for ingredients in delicious dishes.  I like having things on hand and canning it up now would certainly make for some tasty future dishes.

Do you have any favorites that you can?

Buying in Bulk...

FAST FOOD FRIDAY...

"I'm too busy to cook."  "I worked all day."  "I'm Tired."  "It's way too hot out."  "I don't really want to go to the store."   Who hasn't heard or even said these words before?  Should you call for pizza?  Should you pick something up from the nearest drive through?  Nope, neither.  All you need is a little Food Fore-thought.  Fast Food Friday, a planned weekly post, isn't about running out to a local restaurant for take out or calling for delivery.  Fast Food Friday is about having something on hand for those days when cooking just seems impossible or even unappealing. 

With a little planning and preparation, fast food can come straight from our cabinets, pantries, and freezers.  What we are really talking about here is food preservation.  Food preservation can change our future days - take the guess work out of meal prep, allow for an evening of rest not stress, change your grocery bill's bottom line, and of course, nix the expense of drive-thru eatings.  Now those points do sound appealing.

So for many many Friday's to come, check back to see how I plan to never be too busy to cook, not too tired to eat well, not considering if it's too hot out, and best of all, skipping trips to the store.  For today, let's talk about...

Buying in Bulk...

Buying in bulk can be a great way to save money and have food on hand.   But, it can also be not so great if the extra food you buy just goes to waste.  You really have to have a plan in mind when buying bulk food.  You really should know where and how you're going to store it and how you intend to use it up (with out wasting).  Some things to consider are ... "Do I have enough freezer/cabinet space?", "Do I have zip lock bags for portioning", and "Is this food that I'll really use up?".  The foods I like to buy in bulk are ones that we eat on a weekly basis.  

For example, this week we made a trip to the local Sam's and picked up 1 1/2 pounds of honey ham ($7), 1 1/2 pounds of roast beef ($9),  5 pounds of mozzarella ($12), and 3 pounds of pepperoni ($8).  

Sandwiches and pizza hit the menu weekly around here.  

The lunch-meat quantities don't sound like much for a family of five, but really only two of us eat sandwiches for lunch and that's what this purchase was intended for.  Now when portioned out they make up quite a bit.  I portion out enough to make two to three sandwiches.  Each portion gets wrapped in saran wrap.  All the portions then get put into a labeled freezer zip lock bag.  I ended up with five portions of ham and five of roast beef.  For us, that's five weeks worth of lunch-meat at $16 or $1.20 a week.  If bought from the grocery store, I average spending  $6 a week and having waste.

As for the pizza ingredients, five pounds of mozzarella got portioned into 10 two cup packages and the pepperoni portioned out to 22 packages.  This twenty dollars worth of ingredients will be enough to make ten pizzas or in our case, five weeks worth.  This is a huge money saver for us.   When we order out it is usually around $25 for two pizzas.  

These savings can really add up.  On both accounts, it's easily a 75% savings.  Not to mention, there's future fast food on hand

Ready for the freezer

Remember, it's all about fore thought.  Spend a little time now when you have it and in the future when you need it, you'll have fast food on hand.  If you're wondering how this will make for fast food, I'll be sharing my recipe for frozen pizza crust next week.  Dinner will be done in 20 minutes and it will be as easy as shopping the "freezer section" right in your own kitchen.

Enjoy, and be thinking of how you can make life easier in the future.

This post is shared with Food Renegade.

Pineapple Sorbet

Summer activities are finally slowing down around here.  So, with a little time on my hands, I've begun to do some canning.  Last week, I canned seven pints of pineapple.   As I was preparing it to be cubed, I realized I was wasting quite a bit by shaving down the sides to remove bits of skin and those prickly things.  Seemed a shame so when I was done cubing I went back through my pile of shavings and cut the bits of skin from the bits of edible flesh.  Time consuming?  Slightly.  Worth it?  Definitely.  Inspired by Strawberry Sorbet from The Kitchn, I decided to whip these bits of pineapple into sorbet.

I only used what I had on hand (pineapple and honey), and it came out great.  Too bad I didn't have a shot of rum on hand cause that would have really stepped it up :)


Pineapple Sorbet


2 cups crushed pineapple
1/4 cup honey
1 ounce of rum (optional)


Puree the pineapple in a food processor and blend in the honey and rum.  Chill in the refrigerator for 4- 6 hours.  Pour mixture into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacture's instructions.  Sorbet will continue to firm up once returned to the freezer.


Enjoy :)

Dehydrating

Fast Food Friday...  

"I'm too busy to cook."  "I worked all day."  "I'm Tired."  "It's way too hot out."  "I don't really want to go to the store."   Who hasn't heard or even said these words before?  Should you call for pizza?  Should you pick something up from the nearest drive through?  Nope, neither.  All you need is a little Food Fore-thought.  Fast Food Friday, a planned weekly post, isn't about running out to a local restaurant for take out or calling for delivery.  Fast Food Friday is about having something on hand for those days when cooking just seems impossible or even unappealing. 

With a little planning and preparation, fast food can come straight from our cabinets, pantries, and freezers.  What we are really talking about here is food preservation.  Food preservation can change our future days - take the guess work out of meal prep, allow for an evening of rest not stress, change your grocery bill's bottom line, and of course, nix the expense of drive-thru eatings.  Now those points do sound appealing.

So for many many Friday's to come, check back to see how I plan to never be too busy to cook, not too tired to eat well, not considering if it's too hot out, and best of all, skipping trips to the store.  For today, let's talk about...

Dehydrating

green pepper, zucchini, tomato, and radish 

This week has been busy busy.  So busy that preparing a few simple veggies seemed not do-able.  I simply hate seeing food go to waste.  It's the whole "waste not want not" adage.  What I allow to waste today is gone.  When the day comes that I want... well, too bad.  Now I realize that today I'm just talking about a few veggies, but we all know that seasons change.  When that happens, fresh local veggies are no more.  A trip to the store at that time could suffice. However, I'd be paying more for out of season, non-local produce that I once had but let waste.  It just doesn't seem too smart.  Plus, the whole point here is to plan for future days.

Dehydrated vegetables fit into the plan really well.  For example, today I'm planning for future meals of soup.  Come winter when my excuses abound for not cooking, I'll be able to throw some chicken stock, beans/pasta, and dehydrated veggies into the crockpot and voila.  Pair it with some crusty French bread made on a less tiresome day and dinner is served.

Another nice thing about dehydrating is that you can do a little at a time.  You don't have to have a ton of veggies to make this work.  Like today, I'm dehydrating two small zucchinis,  one medium sized Daikon radish, four cherry tomatoes, two green peppers, and two small jalapenos - a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  The results will NOT be astounding size wise.  In fact, you may look at the picture and say,"You're saving what?".  Hehe.  It's OK.  It's all part of a bigger picture.  A few nice things about dehydrated food - it takes up very little space, a little goes a long way, and you can keep adding to it with no ill effects.

So what will my future fast food be? 

tomatoes, radish, and zucchini added to previously dehydrated onion and carrot

Minestrone Soup 

1 cup of dehydrated veggie mix (carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, onion, and radish), 1 cup of miniature pasta shells from the pantry, 1/2 c of red kidney beans (soaked), 1 tsp of garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste, and 5 cups of chicken stock.  6-8 hours in the crockpot on low.  Can certainly add some leftover cooked ground beef or chopped chicken to make for a heartier meal.


What future fast food plans are you making?

The CSA Report (a day late)

The CSA Report  will be a regular Wednesday post from now until October.  CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, is still a relatively new term to people so I want to expand on what it is, what it's all about, and what one could get out of it.  For me, I like the idea of getting fresh local produce on a prepaid and regular basis. By joining the CSA, I've made a commitment to local farmers that financially help them start their season. In return, I get the freshest of produce and a variety that I would not normally think to buy.  So I'll also be getting creative in the kitchen.

Week Five...

This week's produce was actually delivered a day early due to the fourth falling on a Wednesday. While normally I would have cooked some of these goodies up with our dinner, the fourth threw that off as well.    "Let the festivities begin" was the motto for both Tuesday and Wednesday.  You see, we've been out and about attending cookouts, the parade, and fireworks shows.  Yes, it's been a little to busy around here to be cooking up fresh veggies.   We'll also be off on a one day stay-cation tomorrow and won't be cooking up anything fresh then either.  So though these veggies [ except for the Swiss chard] are all pretty good about sitting around a few days, some decisions had to be made. 


The Swiss chard has been given to our bunny rabbit.  It was beginning to wilt and I just didn't see us using it in time.  He is munching happily.  The beets, onion, and garlic have been put to the side as they'll keep for a while.  The radish and zucchini however, have made their way into the dehydrator.  I also put in some green peppers and tomatoes from the garden.  All of which will make for some tasty soup mixes this fall.  More on that topic tomorrow.