Fast Food

My cookbook sharing friend let me flip through a few of her current cookbook finds the other day. "What to cook when you don't feel like cooking" was the theme. The cookbook was neat because it had recipes organized by time needed to cook. 

This one caught my eye because we have a bag of tator tots in the freezer (leftover from tator tot hotdish). 

It was super easy and only used one pan, so cleanup was a breeze. 

I used freeze dried peppers instead of fresh, and they seemed to rehydrate okay. 

I left it sit in the cast iron too long after cooking... It didn't stick, but the moisture reacted with the metal and gave it a slight metallic taste. At least for my taste. That's happened with other foods too (that have sat too long and are acidic). G hasn't noticed, so maybe I'm just sensitive. 😅 

Definitely a recipe I'd make again!

Tomato Basil Soup Upgrade

Remember that failure of a soup I made about a month ago? The tomato basil goat milk soup that split and wasn't tomatoey enough? 

I had frozen the leftovers, thinking I'd make a pasta sauce sometime. Today was that day. 

It was so liquidy, I knew it needed to be reduced by quite a bit. Therefore, frying pan for more surface area. 

I thought about cooking noodles directly in the sauce to try to soak up some moisture, but I wanted to use rice noodles, and because they don't have the starch regular noodles have, they could turn soggy and gelatinous instead of a nice firm texture. (Thank you AI for the information). 

So the noodles cooked separately. 

The sauce took a long time to reduce, as I suspected. I added some tomato peel powder to thicken it, more salt, and a splash of lemon juice. 

Noodles added once cooked, and voila. 

It would've tasted nice with chicken, but I didn't have any around (besides our live ones outside 😅), so I served it with ground walnuts on top. Wow, did that elevate the flavor! 

Not a bad meal! 

RMH Meal

Jaron is almost two years old. How did that happen? 🤯 Isn't that always the case though? Time flies by. 

We had appointments in Rochester the past three days- general checkups, all went well- and we served our annual meal at the Ronald McDonald House to celebrate Jaron's birthday and give back to the organization that helped us so much when he was in the hospital. 

Our menu was the same as last year: homemade goulash soup, homemade bread, lettuce salad with tomatoes and cucumbers, homemade applesauce, and cookies. 

This year we used tomatoes from our garden and I made gingersnaps from scratch. 

Last year we made way too much food, so this year we made half as much and it was just the right amount. Six batches of soup, six loaves of bread, one roaster of applesauce (same amount as last year - a 5gal pail of apples), and four batches of gingersnaps. There were a lot of cookies leftover, but we did that on purpose so we could bring them to the NICU nurses. 

We started cooking around 2pm Thursday after a stop up on the NICU floor to visit our nurses. That timed out very well. Last year we paused cooking to visit and cooking got rushed in the end. This year was much more relaxed even with the extra from scratch item. 

Jaron fell asleep on the way back from the hospital and snoozed in the car seat while we cooked. 

I made the bread and cookies. G bought the groceries and made the soup. One of our favorite house volunteers had signed up to be the scheduled host for us (they always have someone familiar with the kitchen/serving help with the meal). She made the salad and helped get our serving line set up. 

Mimi and Papa showed up just in time to entertain Jaron when he woke up from his nap. He had a blast playing with them outside, in the gym, and in the toy room. 

They also helped serve the meal. 

Here we are, ready to go! 

We served about 65 meals, which was our estimate of how many. Lots of positive feedback on the food. Guess we'll keep it the same for next year. 😉 

Breakfast Cookies

I was super excited about this recipe... Breakfast Cookies! 

I didn't have any sliced almonds, but I did have some chopped walnuts left from a different recipe, so I swapped those. Instead of the craisins, I did a combo of dried mulberries and dried berry mix, which includes pepitas. 

They turned out great. Very hearty, just sweet enough. They hold together well and aren't crumbly.

A perfect filling breakfast before a day of appointments! 

Deodorant

G used to make his own deodorant. He only stopped because it was messy to scoop it out of a container and apply it under the arms. That didn't sound appealing to me either. I wondered if we could reuse our empty deodorant stick containers. 

I tried that in a past experiment. The only way the plastic ones work is if you leave some deodorant in the bottom before any holes appear, otherwise the liquid deodorant runs right out the bottom. 

So we bought deodorant for a while. Then we found some cardboard deodorant tubes from that company. I bet those could be refilled! 

We had some jar deodorant in the bathroom drawer, so today I pulled them out and set them on this ancient heating pad I keep in the craft room. Worked like a charm to melt them! 

We had enough empty deodorant sticks around to fill. 

And voila! Homemade deodorant able to be applied cleanly! 

I wonder if G will notice a difference in the store bought vs ours... 🤔

Freeze Dried Tomatoes

Lots of green tomatoes on the vines, not many red. Certainly not enough to do a batch of canned tomatoes or even a freeze dryer batch. So, I've been cutting them in half and freezing them for later freeze drying. 

The deer have discovered the garden, not that there's much for them to eat. They sampled a tomato and didn't care for it (the green one below). 

I've debated pulling out plants already, but my stubbornness kicked in and I'm going to leave them in for a while longer. Maybe we'll have a mini heat wave and get some more tomatoes and peppers. 😅

Green Beans

I've always loved dilly beans but never made them myself. With all the beans G brought home from the garden center, I figured it was time. 

They're pretty easy to make (recipe from Ball.com). A clove of garlic, tsp of dill in each jar. Cut your beans to 4in, mix up brine. Hot water bath can. Done. 

The recipe suggested adding some red pepper flakes for a bit of a kick. I did that for three of the jars (wide mouth so I'd remember which was which). 

I did one batch of beans in my little pressure canner. 

The rest of the beans ended up blanched for freezing.