Tag Archives: it’s the economy

>Daisy’s Turkey Impossible Pot Pie

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>Perhaps you’ve heard of the faux- pot pie trick, using biscuit mix instead of a pie crust. I’d heard it, but never used it. With a refrigerator full of turkey and other random turkey-related ingredients, I decided to try this. Here’s the resulting formula, Daisy style.

Filling (a.k.a. “crust”)
1 1/3 cup milk
4 eggs
1 cup Bisquick or other biscuit mix
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp herbs (I used fresh thyme & rosemary, growing in pots on top of the piano)
Main Ingredients
1 cups turkey, cooked & chopped (I used dark meat)
1 1/2 cup vegetables (I used corn with a little broccoli & cauliflower)
1 cup mushroom pieces (optional; I left this out)
1/2 cup onions, diced (we had pearl onions leftover from soup; they were delicious in this)
1/2 cup diced bell peppers, red & green
1 cup shredded cheese (I used a mix of Swiss and mild cheddar)
Preheat oven to 400. Spray two pie pans or 8 inch round cake pans with nonstick spray. Thaw and drain vegetables. Mix meat, vegetables, and cheese in pie plates. Beat filling (crust) ingredients until smooth. Pour into pie pans over meat mixture. Bake 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes; serve warm.
According to the original, one pie pan serves two people. We found that one was almost enough to serve our family of four. 2/3 of the second pan was left over. Leftover leftovers! Delicious. Next time I make this, I’ll add gravy because the end result was a little dry. Chuck poured a little gravy over his second helping and pronounced it good, so I’ll take that under advisement.
For the original recipe, look to Healthy Home Recipes’ web site. They have more options and ideas for this one, and the link might just lead you to something else that you like.

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>Donors Choose Update: oh, yes.

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>I was honestly thinking of writing about compassion fatigue: generous people who just can’t give any more. With so many free-lunch students I can’t even count them, families who have trouble buying pencils, and my own budget shrinking, I have a hard time coming up with a few pennies no matter how worthy the cause.

And then I got the benchmark reading levels for my class. Seven fourth graders, only one with a diagnosed learning disability, all reading at a first grade level. Kids reading at the level of Frog and Toad, Henry and Mudge, Little Bear. But they didn’t want to be caught reading Little Bear in front of their peers.
So I went to work. Research: where can I find high -interest, low-reading level books for these students? All want to read. They want to read cool books, fun books. So I found cool, fun, and easy books. And oh, my, were they pricey. Buying any quantity for teaching purposes would require a significant investment.
I wrote to several civic groups. I had missed the fall deadline for one. One turned me down saying we didn’t “fit their mission,” but referred me to another source. Yet another funded some more glamorous projects. Face it; books aren’t sexy, no matter how necessary.
Then along came DonorsChoose.org. I found them after writing a post for MomCentral Consulting, a PR post announcing their Bing “Our School Needs” project. One of the perks of writing a post was a donation credit code for DonorsChoose.org. You guessed it; I wrote my own project so I could keep my donation code at home, er, at my own school.
I shamelessly promoted this project through Plurk, Twitter, and my own blog. Other bloggers promoted it, too, and even donated. Yesterday I got the exciting news: my project was closed. Funded completely. Done.
Oh. My. Goodness. I could hardly sit still. Even though I’ve verified the orders and downloaded the thank you package, I’m still in a bit of happy shock.
The biggest and happiest surprise was the speed at which the project finished. Several donors ate away very quickly at the first hundred. Then a large donor, a foundation new to me, stepped in and finished the job.
Douglas and Maria Bayer Foundation, I applaud you. My students will thank you, too – as soon as I get their photo releases and help them write the letters. Seeing the project fully funded so soon and with a major generous donor really knocked my socks off. It’s wonderful to see that despite all the needs in our world, compassion and generosity still thrive.
Now, about those donor codes? The school down the road has a project, too. It’s time to Pay it Forward.

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>Bing "Our School Needs" – Phase Two

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Many schools entered Phase One of Bing’s “Our School Needs,” but only 15 are finalists. You can register and vote for them here. They’re all worthy projects, and there is one in my home state of Wisconsin. Aquinas High School in LaCrosse, WI is seeking funding for a new auditorium. If you read their story, you’ll see why they’re asking for help.
Aquinas is not the only school suffering from budget cuts. When the economy is bad and local taxpayers are suffering financially, the average Joe or Josie on the street sees schools as money pits. The same average Joe or Josie might not know that central administration has been cut drastically, combining two positions into one in several cases. Joe and Josie also don’t know that energy costs have been cut by not turning on the heat until students arrive, disregarding the teachers who’ve been working in their cold and drafty rooms for an hour already. Josie and Joe might collect box tops and soup labels and think they’re helping, but fail to realize that each UPC code earns only 10 cents – not even enough to buy a #2 pencil.
Bing will divide a quarter-million dollars between four winners. The top vote-getter will receive $100,000, and the next three will get $50,000 each. Voting started yesterday and continues through Sunday, November 7, with winners announced on Tuesday, November 9.
PTA and booster club fundraisers can only go so far. Supporting Bing’s donation project will help a lot. Supporting DonorsChoose.org is another way to fund a specific project that will make a direct impact on students and their learning.
Josie and Joe may not understand the need for stronger funding, but Josh does – Josh Groban, that is. Here he is signing autographs as he dropped off instruments and sang in a chorus class at a middle school in Queens, NY. This is a great way to call attention to the project and support the arts in schools. Thanks, Josh! Now would you have a talk with Joe and Josie about school funding?
I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Bing and received a gift card and DonorsChoose.org giving code to thank me for taking the time to participate. I plan to apply my DonorsChoose.org code to my own project here. Please consider passing the word; it’s another very direct way you can help students learn.

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>Bread Pudding

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>I learned to like bread pudding long ago when I made it for a chain restaurant’s breakfast buffet. I also learned not to order it off the menu or buffet unless I’d made it myself. Just knowing that restaurants made it from stale leftover bread made me a little leery of the contents. Home made bread pudding, however, can be a lovely comfort food: breakfast, snack, or dessert, depending on how you want to serve it.

Bread Pudding
2 1/2 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3-4 bread pieces, cut in chunks
2-3 eggs, beaten
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place bread, sugar, & cinnamon in a baking dish (1 quart size). Add eggs, milk, and butter. Mix well. Place baking dish into a pan of water (1 inch deep) and into oven. Bake 20 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Serve warm or cold with milk or cream.
I also diced one and a half ripe bananas into the mix. I had the bananas, and I remembered using leftover bananas that were too ripe for banana splits in the buffet bread pudding. Yum. Oh, and about a quarter cup leftover apple confit, too. Tasty!
I served it with whipped cream and coffee. Are you surprised? No, don’t answer that. But try it; this is a good recipe for using excess bread and rapidly ripening fresh fruits, and a good comfort food as well.


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>The rationale behind the banana bread and bread pudding

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>In order to carry out a successful pantry raid, the pantry must supply decent ingredients. For today’s raid it was baking supplies.

We had too many bananas. Chuck 9the main banana-eater) was ill earlier in the week and not eating much. I added a banana half to my cereal yesterday and my oatmeal today, but we still had four and a half ripe bananas. Banana bread, right? Right. Sort of. Almost.
I also had several bread crusts and a few slices of homemade white bread with flaxseed from earlier in the week. I had enough bread crumbs in the freezer that I didn’t want to grind up any more. I could have composted these, but I thought I’d try using them up first.
AND — if that weren’t enough, I had two rogue zucchini that had managed to ripen during the recent warm weeks.
Hence the afternoon baking results:
Hybrid quick-bread: banana/zucchini with chocolate chips.
Bread pudding with bananas
While the oven was working its magic, I worked on updating my gradebook for upcoming parent-teacher conferences. Whether conferences go well or not, I’ll know I fed my family some good food and did it with a minimum of waste.
Oh, yes. The recipes? Banana bread is here. I doubled the recipe, cut down on the eggs, added a little extra flour and wheat germ to counteract the moist zucchini, mixed in several Tablespoons of cocoa, and finally used 3 bananas and 1 1/2 cup grated zucchini. As for the bread pudding, I’ll post it Tuesday.

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>Where do you keep your foods in jars?

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>Food In Jars, a canning blog, is one of my regular reads and go-to sources for information. A month ago (was it really almost a month ago?) blogger Marisa put up a post asking readers where they stored their goodies after canning them.

I’m a beginning canner, so there aren’t many cans on the shelf yet. The cupboard, like almost everything in our home, has a history.

This gray cabinet resides in our basement along an inside wall. It has glass fronts on the main lower shelving, and solid doors on two smaller sections on top. When we found these in the basement, we presumed they had been part of the original kitchen or dining room, probably lining the walls. The previous homeowners, most likely practical and frugal sorts, had moved them downstairs rather than throw them in a dumpster.
Last summer a young couple knocked at our door. Somewhat sheepishly, the woman told us she had lived here as a child and as long as she was in town, could she see the house again? Of course we invited them in. She described many changes beyond those we’d made, and told us that the gray cabinets had indeed sat in the small dining room, but they had lined up at a 90 degree angle from the wall at the bathroom door, making a sort of short hallway.
Well, now they’re in our basement, serving a good purpose. My canning supplies and the resulting jars are sitting behind the glass doors, looking delicious. I expect to fill the shelves a little more each year as I learn new skills and get more adventurous with the canner and food in jars.

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>Where the Cookbooks Are

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>It’s the economy. Or maybe it’s due to the increasingly common food-borne illnesses like salmonella. More and more people are turning to buying locally and cooking from scratch. Where do they get their recipes? For many of today’s cooks, the basics and the preserving tips skipped a generation. Our mothers (and occasionally our fathers) cooked from mixes and made convenience foods whenever they could. These frozen foods and boxed mixes made it easy for working parents to feed the family when they got home. For a long time, there was no desire to go back to the old ways of slow cooking, starting with the basic ingredients. Time-saving was time-saving, and thank goodness for that!

That’s how food blogger Drew came up with the name for his web site and blog How to Cook Like your Grandmother. Drew recently asked readers where we get our recipes and where we keep our cookbooks. You guessed it, readers. I grabbed my camera.

The main batch of cookbooks, the ones I use most often, sit on an easily accessible shelf next to the kitchen. It’s on the main drag in the home; you can tell by the keys/ change bowl in the center and my purse on the right.
A second shelf of cookbooks takes up space inside the cupboard. It fills about half the shelf. My 13 by 9 pans, muffin pans, and cooling racks sit to the right. Below, well, you can see below! Slow cooker, mixer, immersion blender, coffee grinder.
Now back to our main event: cookbooks and recipes. I also have a file on my laptop aptly named “Recipes.” Subfolders include cookies, canning, and crock pot. There’s a similar folder on the family desktop computer, the one I use very little these days. Between two of the cookbooks inside the cabinet are two old-time files — manila file folders — filled with printed recipes and inspirations cut from magazines and newspapers. Some day (some summer day, most likely) I’ll make a project out of organizing them into a binder.
I don’t really cook like my grandmother. I cook like me. Only the future will tell how my daughter will cook, and so far she’s doing quite well. I might even let her take a few favorites away to start her own cookbook collection. Maybe.

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>Pantry Raid; it’s what’s for supper!

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>The scene: suppertime.

The situation: decision-making time. What to cook?
The cast: starting in front, clockwise. Onion & green pepper, farm market style, already diced. Call it a planned-over if you wish. Diced tomato; leftover from tacos. Sweet corn, cooked, still on the cob; another leftover, farm market style. Bell peppers (also from the market) in green, yellow, and purple.
Ah, yes, in the back: Uncle Ben’s fast and natural brown rice.
Narrator: I sense a stir fry coming up. Or perhaps a dirty rice; I think I see the jar of Creole Seasoning snugging up close to the box of rice. Stay tuned; there’s a supporting cast coming up.
Supporting cast, all leftovers, with a slight farm market flavor:
Top container: a few tart cherries left over from making mixed berry jam
Bottom container: fruit cocktail, canned, left over from lunch yesterday
On the cutting board: one apple.
And behind the cast, sitting patiently and waiting for its turn, the crock pot Little Dipper.
Narrator: The supporting cast clearly alludes to the potential for a fruit mix. The Little Dipper could star in its own show, but it’ll meld the fruit flavors perfectly with a little brown sugar and cinnamon, softening the mix for a lovely fruit compote.
Narrator: The results? A successful raid! Dirty rice, fruit compote, all delicious, all in the refrigerator just waiting to be called out for their turn participating in a good Pantry Raid supper.

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>Staying cool in the heat

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>We installed central air conditioning when we bought our home many years ago. Health was one reason: Amigo had asthma when he was young, and humid heat would make him miserable. We’d cooled the tiny duplex we called home with a window unit and a series of fans. Finally having central air was a huge relief.

Air conditioning, centralized or a window unit, isn’t always necessary. Frankly, when the weather is less extreme, I’m happy to open up the house and let the breezes keep us comfortable. Our den is usually the coolest room in the house. It’s small, it has two windows across from each other, and it has a ceiling fan, too. The windows and fan keep the air moving just right, making the den couch the perfect place for a summer nap.
But I wasn’t talking about napping. I was thinking about cooling, keeping comfortable in summer’s heat.
Mother Nature Network featured 8 Ways to Stay Cool without A/C. Without going over all eight (you can follow the link yourself), I’ll choose my favorites.
–Stay hydrated. Absolutely. Water, water, everywhere. Drink up, folks. I just put a pitcher of fruit punch in the refrigerator in case we need an alternative. Lemonade, iced tea, all are good.
–Avoid using the oven. Right on! I’ve cooked on the grill, used the microwave, and the few times I used the oven, I did not preheat and made a point of turning it off immediately. I’m lucky to have a small kitchen, and the heat from the oven does not spread to the rest of the house. And those cookies I’ve been craving will just have to wait until tonight; it’s not worth it to heat up the oven midday.
–Add to the above: avoid heat-creating appliances during the hottest part of the day. Laundry can wait until evening or get done early in the morning. Seriously. There’s not rush.
–Close the curtains. Blinds, curtains, window coverings of any kind can block the sun’s heat and prevent the room from overheating in the first place. If you’re using the A/C, this simple step helps keep the cool air from reheating, overworking the air conditioning.
If you’re sweating like crazy and really, really need to air condition your living space, which is the most frugal choice: window units or central air? Leah Ingram discusses this very issue on her Suddenly Frugal blog. The simple answer: there is no simple answer. It depends on many variables. Leah explains it well; check her out.
So readers, stay cool, drink lots of liquids, and blog from the shade or an air-conditioned coffee shop. That coffee is good over ice, too. Works for me, and keeps me cool!

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Top Ten Reasons I Adore Fleet Farm

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10. Fleet Farm had the tomato supports I needed when no one else in town stocked them.
9. My receipts come with a discount on gas at their gas station. If I fill up the minivan there after making a purchase, I save. I fill my van so seldom; if I can wait to fill the tank when I’m at Fleet Farm, it’s a winner.
8. The clerk at the Fleet gas station resembles a young Brad Paisley. If the teen girls start hanging around the bait counter, we’ll know why.
7. I can resist most impulse buys because of the unique merchandise. I do not need a blaze orange negligee. Really, honey.
6. I said most impulse buys, not all. I did buy a small funnel for my jam. It turned out to be a perfect fit for the tops of the jars, and it prevented waste and messes. I’ve never seen this little gizmo anywhere else – only at Fleet Farm.
5. It’s a huge store; getting what I need requires exercise. Who needs a treadmill? Who needs to walk the mall? I just shop at Fleet Farm.
4. It’s easier to say than Farm and Fleet.
3. Chuck and I bought our bikes there three years ago, and they’re still going strong.
2. It keeps me humble. Walking from the canning supplies to the garden center I passed through the equine section. There are things on the shelves that a city girl like me will never need. Need? I don’t even know what most of the equine equipment is!
1. At Fleet Farm, I found everything I needed to make my first batch of jam!

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