15 Minute Dinner

The other night we were busy running around just before dinner time and everyone was starting the usual hungry meltdowns. I needed to get dinner on the table quick, not just because I didn't want to hear any more whining or crying, but also because I wanted two little ones to get to bed soon too! :)

I had planned on making potato leek soup and biscuits for dinner, which fit the day perfectly! :) It was a rainy, chilly day--a perfect soup night. Anyway, I got home from the store and got food from the freezer to the table in 15 minutes! :) Amazing!! It was extra nice because it was a wonderful homemade dinner and not a frozen pizza or precooked meal from the store.

Here's how it worked:
-Put frozen biscuits in the oven at 375
-Chopped onions and leeks from the freezer into the pan with a little butter
-Diced potatoes into the pan with 2 cans of chicken broth
-Smash some of the potatoes and add cream
-Let it simmer while getting bowls and spoons out and the table set
-Take biscuits out of the oven
-Dinner served!

Bonus:
-Hardly any dishes! :)
-2 gallon freezer bags worth stored in the freezer for future meals

First $1,000 done!

Woo Hoo!! A super exciting milestone was hit this week with a $235 extra payment made on a student loan. We've officially paid $1,000 worth of debt off since the beginning of August. That's awesome. Hopefully we'll keep the momentum going and be able to pay at least that much, if not more, on that loan again with the next paycheck. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! ;)

Side note: HUGE blessing, our car ended up being about $300 less then we had anticipated. God is good!

Rosemary Potatoes

I was asked to share my rosemary potato recipe, so here it is:

Diced potatoes (I usually use red and leave the skin on, but it can be however you like them). I boil them for a little bit to help speed up the cooking time, usually to just before they are done.

I then pour them onto a baking sheet and drizzle them with Extra Virgin Olive Oil (or you can use whatever variety you have or like). I then sprinkle them with salt and pepper, garlic powder and rosemary (either fresh, finely chopped or dry).

I bake them at 375 for about 8-10 minutes, flipping them at least once. I've also broiled them on low, but you have to really watch them closely that way.

It's that simple and they taste great. You can always adapt it for mashed potatoes if you prefer too.

Hashbrowns

With some of the last bag of potatoes I have from the farm I'm going to be making some hash browns to freeze. I know hash browns can be one of those "picky" potato recipes, so I've been looking into ways to make sure they work well. I've made them before and haven't had much trouble, but since I'd be freezing a lot this time, I wanted to make sure I made them so they'd freeze well too.

Here are some tricks I've learned:
*Older potatoes work better
*Partially cooking the potatoes before shredding them works best
*Drain the moisture out of the shredded, cooked potatoes (either by laying them on paper towels and patting them dry or by using a salad spinner)
*Thinner patties work best for cooking them to the right "doneness"
*It works best to have a hot pan, med-high heat works better to

So the basic process will look like this:
*Wash and peel the potatoes
*Boil them for a few minutes (don't let them get to the falling apart stage!)
*Shred them in the food processor or with a manual grater
*Freeze or make a thin layer to cook on a hot pan

Hope they turn out great!

Tomatoes turned to Marinara

With all the tomatoes we got we made a large pot of marinara and then canned it. My husband has a wonderful recipe from being a cook at an italian restaurant back in high school. What a great job for a husband to have had, huh?!?! ;) It certainly comes in handy. Back to the marinara...

We had about 15 pounds of blanched, peeled and cored tomatoes and decided to make it all. There are a lot of recipes on the internet, but like we do, you can also can a favorite family recipe. We leave meat out of ours because the canning is less complicated and less likely to have spoiling issues. Although, if that is something you'd like to do, it is possible, just be sure to look into the requirements before doing so. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you do your own recipe when canning you need to balance the acidity levels (which basically means you have to add vinegar or lemon juice to some recipes). For marinara we found that we need to add 1 Tbsp of lemon juice per jar, so we simply pour it into the jar as we pour the marinara in to make sure to get the measurements right.

I can't guarantee that this will be a cheaper then buying cans or jars at the store, a lot depends on your recipe. For us, it's probably comparable because we are okay with buying the $0.88/can kind. Although, I can guarantee that yours will be much tastier! :) To save money we buy the cheaper one, but our canned version far surpasses it in flavor and quality for about the same price or maybe even a little more. It's worth it though! :)

The end result--yummy!

Grocery Budget

During the last two weeks I hardly used any of our grocery budget! Super exciting, since we did have other expenses that were a little unexpected, it helps to not have used much from that category. It also means that I can set more away to help with our bulk meat. We have a friend who is a hunter and has offered to hunt us some meat! :) We'll just have to cover the butcher fees, but it'll give us a lot of meat for a while. We're looking forward to that. Yay to savings! :)

Pondering the 'Convenience' Items

One of the main things I've been thinking about in the last few days is that a lot of the things I've been doing to save us money, especially with the groceries, is that it's NOT hard. I guess it's easy to think that the convenience things are so much easier, which they are easy-er, but not because making them is hard, it just takes time. I guess the bottom line is that with a little effort and time you can make your own convenience items to have on hand for the rushed meal moments.

One of the main things I think of is the roasted peppers. I was expecting it to be complicated or even thinking of taking the peppers to have them roasted at a local shop that does them (which if you need a time saver it's worth finding one in your area and it's not very expensive, here they would do a bushel for $3), but then realized it's just grilling them. 'Really? That's it!' Was basically my response. I was irritated that I'd spent so much money on a jar when all I had to do was char some peppers to get the same thing for much cheaper!

With all the prep work that I did with the farm vegetables I was realizing the same thing. It's really not HARD to do these things. It's time consuming up front, but then it's just as easy as grabbing things out of the freezer later. What it comes down to is that at the grocery store we are paying someone to put their time into making it easy for us. Not bad at all, don't get me wrong, there are times when it's SO worth the money to get something easy, as long as we realize that we essentially paid someone to help us out! :)

I'm thinking after all of this I might not be as quick to get the convenience items at the store. I know now that I am capable of doing a lot of this myself and I'll hopefully try that option first.

Roasted Peppers

The last big project was to make roasted red peppers. I actually chopped some of them up to keep frozen for other recipes, but roasted the rest.

I've often enjoyed the roasted red peppers in dishes, but they've always been such a pricey item to buy at the store that I've rarely used them. I was excited to find out that roasting peppers isn't that hard at all! You can do them on the grill or in the oven whichever fits your needs best. Since the weather hasn't gotten too cold yet here, I decided to use the grill.

It's as simple as washing them and placing them on the grill for several minutes, flipping them to get both sides charred. Once you have let them cool in a brown paper bag then peel the skin, empty the seeds and cut them into the pieces you want. Store them in a freezer bag or container.

There are a few tricks I learned:
-DON'T take the gloves off! Even if it's hard to work with them, some of the peppers we got were cayenne and my hands felt like they were literally burnt from peeling them.
-It's much easier to use large peppers for roasting. The smaller peppers aren't really worth the effort.
-It's a bit time consuming to deal with the peel (depending on how many you have--we had A LOT!)
-There is NO reason to pay BIG bucks on roasted peppers at the store. It's really not hard to do them at home, and you could even make just the amount you needed for a recipe if you don't have the storage space, for less then paying for the jar at the store.