SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

...that IS the question.
This week the answer is YES.
I think my family likes it when I cook...

Our menu for the week

Sunday: (as in, yesterday) Joe made us a huge pot of garlicky, warm smoked sausage and potato soup and french bread.
Monday: green salad with baked lemon chicken (it was going to be grilled, but it's raining, so never mind), garlic-butter breadsticks.
Tuesday: cheesy, ultimate comfort food: homemade mac'n'cheese {recipe below} with ham, on the side we'll have stir-fried cabbage and fresh fruit.
Wednesday: we'll have smoothies for dinner (kids will get leftovers), then snacks with our home Bible study group. I'll do a tray of olives, prosciutto, cheese, and crackers and either the oatmeal cookies or these oh-my-goodness chocolate butterfinger cookies from Rach's Blog Bite. Oh my goodness. Chocolate + butterfinger + cookies.
Thursday:So I'm indebted to Rach again for another great recipe: the tortellini salad that sounds amazing. Yum. I'll do some dill-marinated cucumbers on the side.
Friday:Fajitas with green peppers and onions, pineapple salsa and chips, and some fresh guac if avocados aren't outrageously expensive. Mmmm.
Saturday:either homemade pizza or grilled brats, potato salad, and red beans.
Sunday:a big pot of chicken and dumplings sound just right. Salad, a tray of fruit and cheese, and maybe some apple pie for dessert, unless I can talk Joe into making some of his amazing chocolate mousse. I think I'm gaining weight just thinking about this meal.

Let's talk about homemade mac'n'cheese. Actually, let's talk about any luxuriously comforting creamy baked pasta dish. It all comes down to the sauce, my friends. The homemade, creamy, and, yes, easy to make sauce.

Basic White Sauce

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
In a large saucepan or saute pan, melt the butter until it is all liquid; immediately sprinkle the flour on and start whisking until the flour and melted butter are mixed together in a lumpy, doughy looking thing. Yum. Looks promising, doesn't it? Don't panic. Turn the heat down to very low, or pull it off heat for a moment, and get out
4 cups of milk
Pour in about a cup of the milk, more or less, and whisk away until the lumpy-doughy butter/flour mix has made a saucy mixture with the milk. Keep whisking to get the lumps out. Keep the pan over low heat so the milk won't scald. Now pour in another 1 or 2 cups of milk, whisk, and then let it bubble until it starts to thicken. Now pour in the rest of the milk, whisk, and keep it over low heat. Give it a stir every now and then. You want to let it just cook on very low heat so it thickens. This would be a good time to season the sauce, so pull out
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Stir the salt and pepper into the sauce. Now, if you want to, you can add more seasoning. For example, I might add
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon dried chervil
1 teaspoon lemon zest
if I want a creamy sauce with some good herby flavor and a little zesty kick. Something a little lighter, good for Spring, to pour over pasta with peas, mushrooms, and Parmesan shavings. But today I'm making mac'n'cheese, so light and springy is not exactly what I'm going for. Instead, I'm going to add
1 tablespoon (okay, I'll probably add 2) minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Now, once the seasonings are added, you just want to let the sauce simmer a bit so all the flavors meld together and the sauce bubbles away and gets thicker. You'll want to taste it and add more salt and pepper as needed. (If it's a bit too salty, don't worry; you'll be pouring it over pasta, so you want it to have a good, intense flavor. If it's much too salty, add another cup of milk.)
That's it for white sauce. Since I'm turning this into mac'n'cheese, though, we need to add.... cheese. Glorious cheese.

to make the mac'n'cheese

I generally just use whatever I have in the refrigerator. This week I have cheddar and monterey jack, so I'll grate enough to make about 2 cups of cheese total and then dump that into the sauce, stirring so the cheese doesn't stick on the bottom. Once the cheese is melted, the sauce is finished. Now, set the sauce aside and continue on:
Cook 1 pound of pasta (shells, macaroni, mostaccioli, whatever you like) according to package directions. Drain and pour into a 13x9 baking dish or a 3 quart casserole dish or whatever else you have handy that is oven-safe and will hold 1 pound of pasta plus sauce.
Fry up 1 pound of bacon or a couple of big slices of ham, or saute 1 pound of chicken breast, or cook 1 pound of ground beef, or any combination you like, or just leave out the meat altogether. It's superfluous, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm really just interested in the cheesy pasta, but my husband really likes his homemade mac'n'cheese with chicken and bacon.
Once the meat is cooked, drain it if needed to get off the excess grease, then let it cool enough to handle. Chop it up into bite-sized pieces, then dump it in with the pasta.
Get your sauce and pour it over the cooked pasta.
Now you have options. You can cook it right away, or you can cover and refrigerate it until just before dinner time. Whenever you're ready to cook, uncover the pasta and stick it in a 350-degree (F) oven. Cook it for 20 minutes, then sprinkle about 1 cup of grated cheese on top (any kind) and let it melt.
Serve. Eat. Don't count calories for this one.

This post is linked up with OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday.

Sometimes I complain about living on a budget, but really, I like* the challenge of coming up with good meals for my family without spending a fortune. I find that the limits actually help me to be a little more creative in the kitchen.

We do a lot more meatless meals, which is healthier anyway. I've resurrected some old Southern favorites that I kind of forgot about, and they are so good. And I've found that the more I make myself the more money I save, plus it all tastes better. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, you can even have a better salad for breakfast during your better morning.

I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly.  Tunafish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock. ~Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Smart Moves for Morning

1. Get into a breakfast routine. It's okay to eat the same thing every day for breakfast, and it will help you be prepared and be sure you're eating something. Switch out week to week if you get bored.
2. Do some prep the night before: get the coffee ready to go, put out breakfast plates, go ahead and unload the dishwasher so it's not waiting for you.
3. Come in to a clean kitchen. At the minimum: put away food, wipe down counters, and put dirty dishes into hot, soapy water to soak. A step above: wash the dishes or load in the dishwasher. Leave only the dirtiest pots/pans soaking overnight. Read the rest of this entry »

I'm linked up with OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday. You should be,too.

Sometimes, when it comes to food, the simplest is the best.

Let's talk about soup.

I love soup. Soup is my friend, except in summer when I'm in a state of perpetual sweatiness. Then the only soup I'm into is gazpacho, ice-cold, but during the other three blessed seasons of the year, me and soup, we're tight. We're buds. We're close.

I could happily eat soup every night, but I don't because 1) sometimes I'm lazy and I like just throwing chicken breasts in the baking dish and voila! dinner; and 2) my husband likes soup, but not quite as much as I do, so I try to be nice and make stuff besides soup too; and 3) a 3 1/2 year old and a 2 year old eating soup every night is too hard on my kitchen, and the cleanliness thereof. I don't like wiping soup off the floor every evening. (Did you catch that "sometimes I'm lazy" bit, above? That comes into play again here.) Read the rest of this entry »

I really don't like cooking breakfast. I really don't like eating breakfast. I love food, but the only thing I really want to eat in the morning is some sort of sweet, starchy item (think pastry) that goes with my coffee. Before 8, that's the only thing that sounds appetizing and, alas, it is extremely bad about expanding the love handles.

My usual morning breakfast routine is something gourmet and exciting like Raisin Bran. I am in awe of these Moms who offer all these morning food choices to their kids. Eggs? Omelet? Egg white omelet with shaved asparagus and prosciutto curls? Cheese toast? Scone with marmalade? No problem, I'll just whip up a batch. French toast? Bacon? Oatmeal?

That doesn't really happen in our house, like, ever. I keep going on kicks where I try to cook us up a nice hot breakfast before my husband leaves for work, and I usually do a nice job for one morning. Or two, on a good stretch. Then it's back to bowls of cold cereal or a granola bar and a banana. (That's my other morning standby. )

I usually make myself eat something just because I know it's important for my metabolism and all that, but I don't really like it. I'd actually like to change this and really, I want to get better at preparing an appetizing morning breakfast option for us all. The problem is, I have too many criteria and since I can't find something that meets them all, I just give up and we go back to default.

My Perfect Breakfast Critera:

1. Something low carb. Sugary sweet baked goods really don't seem like a healthy way to start the day, even though muffins do go great with coffee.
2. Something not uber high fat, like delicious bacon or sausage or cheesy omelets. Again, since the point is to start your day on a healthy note, this seems kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. Or the stomach, so to speak. I'm not opposed to eggs, as in plain ole scrambled, so maybe there's something there...
3. Something quick. Did I mention I have 3 kids? Every moment counts in the morning. Every moment is worth its weight in gold. I do not have time for stirring pots of bubbling breakfasty foods.
4. Something easy to eat, so that my 2 kids who are sitting at the bar feeding themselves won't end up wearing most of their breakfast. It also needs to be
5. Something they'll like, because I just am not ready for an "Oh Yes You WILL Eat Your Food" showdown in the morning.  They're not very picky but, you know, they're kids.

So far, like I said, the best options seem to be a semi-healthy cold cereal (like Whole Grain Cheerios or Raisin Bran) or a banana with a granola bar or piece of whole wheat toast.

But that's all so, so boring and blech and frankly I'm just tired of it. I'd like to serve my family something a little more warm and comforting on these cold winter mornings, but I'm at a loss. So I'm polling the crowd. I am desperate for ideas, recipes, make-ahead breakfast ideas, or anything that comes close to meeting my criteria.

Or, alternately, if any of ya'll want to show up around 7:30 or so with a batch of fresh-baked anything, I'll drop critera #1 in an instant and pour you a cup of coffee.

Help? Please? Share? I'm dying here...and we're almost out of Raisin Bran.

Images courtesy of D Sharon Pruitt.

My sister makes the absolute best cheesecakes in the world. Creamy, sweet but not too sweet, and beautiful. She adds all sorts of good stuff to her cheesecakes (she has a Caramel Apple version and a Reese's version), but this is the basic recipe. Amazing.

Mileah's Cheesecake

24 ounces cream cheese
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Topping
1/4 cup sugar
16 ounces sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

Graham Cracker Crust
1 to 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 350.
Make pie crust: Combine graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar, and melted butter. Pat into bottom of a springform pan.
Make cheesecake: Combine first four ingredients in mixing bowl and mix until smooth. Pour cream cheese into crust. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, then remove from oven.
Make topping: Mix the 1/4 cug sugar, sour cream, and 2 teaspoons vanilla together until blended. Gently spread the sour cream mixture over the cheesecake after it has baked for 18 to 20 minutes, then return it to the oven for 5 minutes or until cake only slightly jiggles in the center.

Let cool. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Image courtesy of bloggyboulga.

Over the weekend, Joe and I decided that the "taking family walks in the evening" plan wasn't working. Okay, actually, it was more like this:
Annie: "I'm melting! I'm melting! It's soo o ooo o ooo hot! I can't walk in this heat. I will die. I will surely die. and If I don't die, then I will kill you for making me come out in this horrible horrible weather."
Joe: "Um...okay...would you like to join the gym, maybe, inste-"
Annie: "YES! Air conditioning! YES! Gym! YES! I like! Oh, sorry, hon, were you saying something else?"

This morning I got up and went to the gym and worked out in the beautifully air-conditioned space. It's one of those 24/7, let yourself in deals. I was the only one there at 4:45am (weird, don't more people just love getting to the gym at 4:45 am? No?) and so it was like I had my own private air-conditioned gym. I still couldn't change the channels on the televisions, though...

Another lady got there while I was mid-way through my graceful cardio huffing-puffing-nearly-keeling-over-20-excruciating-minutes-on-the-elliptical-death-machine portion of my work-out. I didn't mind sharing my gym space by that time. I was just glad someone else was there to pour a little water on my face in case I fainted and fell off when the demon machine upped the resistance again.  Beauty is just so painful sometimes.

So, in unrelated news, here's my menu for the week.

• Monday: fish curry, brown rice, strawberries & pineapple. I'm a little nervous about this because our neighbors are coming over for dinner and Shema (the Mr.) is from Sri Lanka. He's Hindu, so he doesn't eat meat, which is no problem since we like fish anway. But 1) I've never made curry with fish before and 2) I'm cooking curry for a man who knows what REAL curry should be like and makes it and consumes it regularly. I have a strong suspicion that my Americanized version of curry is nothing like Shema's authentic curry... oh well. It's the thought, right...?
• Tuesday: Stuffed pitas + clean out veggies in fridge: corn on the cob, green beans, and salad. I'm not sure what I'll stuff the pitas with yet: maybe this or maybe something more substantial, though with ground beef or turkey instead of lamb. Don't have much lamb sitting in my freezer these days... weird.
• Wednesday: Joe's day off! Big brunch mid-morning (sausage or bacon, pancakes, eggs) then veggie stirfry and noodles for dinner.
• Thursday: Pasta carbonara...some kind of side...
• Friday: Broiled tilapia, oven fries, marinated carrots.
• Saturday: Zugu & meatballs (and pasta to eat it on, of course).
• Sunday: We're either doing fellowship lunch at church or birthday dinner at the in-laws; I'll grate some cheese to make quesadillas for supper in case we're home by then and hungry again.

Visit the host of Menu Plan Monday!

Image Credit: jynmeyer on stock.xchng. Yeah, I'm not quite ready to put up a picture of myself, post-workout. Maybe someday...

Click to visit OrgJunkie, host of Menu Plan Monday

This week I'm joining in on the "Eating Down the Fridge" challenge from food writer Kim O'Donnel at the Washington Post.

It's perfect timing for me: my husband is in the midst of doing some work on my Suburban, so it remains parked at his shop until all is finished. He has to fit in car-fixing before and after his 10-hour workdays. I've kept my schedule open this week and don't actually have to go out until Thursday; I also have multiple work and household projects I need to catch up on after being sick and then simply unmotivated.

So. All is well, then this morning I realize I need groceries! I usually do a grocery run early in the week, Monday or Tuesday. I grabbed diapers over the weekend, but had neither the time, inclination, nor menu plan to do grocery shopping. Then I saw the link to the Fridge challenge on orgjunkie's Twitter update...

Aand the rest, as they say... well, you know what they say.

Join in! Save some money. Get creative. I'm always more creative when I have less to work with; funny how that goes, isn't it. I'll have to check my cupboards to see what materials I have to work with. I think we'll be doing some vegetarian meals. I don't have much meat in the freezer. Off the top of my head, our menu for the week will probably be something like this:

Monday: pasta al forno (carry over from last week)

Tuesday: brats and home made rolls

Wednesday: rice and beans

Thursday: grilled cheese sandwiches, soup

Friday: eeeeehhh... something creative...

Saturday/Sunday: ditto Friday for the weekend. Or I might hit the grocery store on Friday.

Click on the button above to visit OrgJunkie, home of Menu Plan Monday.

This week my menu planning is a bit different. I don't actually have a menu made for this week, and I probably won't be making a grocery trip. So I'm just picking up a few recipes here and there that fit with what I have in my pantry and look amazing... and that's what we'll be eating this week. Voila. I give you the blog-browsing-flexible-nonshopping-menu plan for my household this week:

• These Lazy Day Cinnamon Rolls from Tasty Thoughts blog look amazing. Joe's day off is Thursday this week, so we'll probably have these Thursday for a late breakfast. And then an early lunch... I love cinnamon rolls.
• For dinner tonight, Spicy Pinto Beans and Ham from Are You Hungry? blog. I have a big ham bone in the fridge that I need to use up, and I always have beans. We're on.
• From Laura at Min/Min, I'm grabbing a chicken salad recipe that sounds great. I love chicken salad with fruit in it, and I just happen to have dried cranberries and apples. I have a couple of chickens in the freezer (always) so we'll have this for Tuesday or Wednesday. I better get that chick out to thaw...
• I think this recipe for Roasted Vegetables in the Crockpot looks amazing. Found the recipe from the link on Practicing Thrift blog, which is something I need to do this week... see how well that works out?
• From In the Moment blog I followed the link to this Chicken, Corn, and Tomatillo Chili which looks and sounds and, I'm sure, smells and tastes amazing. Now tomatillos are not something I stock regularly - call me crazy - but I'll probably have to purchase diapers for Wick before Friday anyway....
• If I can, I'm going to make a batch of these Bee Rocks from the Happy Housewife blog. I'm going out of town on Saturday (yes, Valentine's Day...) and will be leaving my man with no cook but himself until Tuesday... he'd appreciate something made ahead for a quick meal.
• I also really like the sound of this Pasta Fagioli soup from $5 Dinners blog. And since it's only $5, I can swing picking up the couple of ingredients I don't have already. You know, when I go get diapers and tomatillos.

The End. Happy Cooking, everyone!