Creamy Pasta

I found the recipe for this sauce attached to a casserole dish. The casserole was not something I would rush to make again, however the sauce seemed to be good to keep on hand. Simplicity is what staples are made of. Especially since this is made of ingredients that almost anyone would have on hand at all times.

This recipe is enough to pair with a half pound of pasta.

Sauce:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup flour

Melt the butter and saute onions. Once onions are soft, add milk. Stir in flour slowly. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

Tossed together with some cooked pasta and any variety of veggies, this is a great weeknight dinner. I managed to make the sauce within the time it took to make the pasta. The corn and peas you see were frozen and added to the sauce right before the milk. Sophia loved this, however I did find it to be a bit bland. Next time I will play around with it some by adding garlic or herbs.

Meal Planning

I am pretty much addicted to facebook. As a single mom, I would not be able to keep up with most of my friends without it. Also, since I do not have cable, it also tends to serve as my news source. Don't worry. I do research any topics that I have interest in before deeming it credible. Another reason I love facebook: it allows me to filter out much of the main stream interest groups so I can focus on my own green-foodie-frugal sentiments. One of the granola paged that I "like", Whole New Mom occasionally posts free e-books, which cater to the lifestyle I try to live. Two of my favorite scores from her page were a guide to raised bed gardening and a guide to meal planning. Hopefully, I will be successful with a garden when the weather gets warmer. I will tell you all about it then, but right now meal planning has been the latest experiment in my home. Meal planning seemed to fit right in with my green-foodie-frugal ways. It eliminates food waste, while keeping me creative in the kitchen and finding ways to make all items count before I buy more. For the most part, my meals have been planned out for the past two months and I don't think I will ever go back to spending my days at work trying to put together that night's meal.

Having a meal plan takes so much stress off your day. I don't know about you, but I am a planner, always have been. I like having a schedule and knowing what is going to happen next. As much as I'd love to be a spontaneous, fly off the seat of my pants kind of gal, I'm not. If I have a plan, that means I have one less thing to think about. It is only natural that I would stumble upon planning out my meals.

Having a meal plan also takes stress off your wallet. By actively thinking about what is already in your home, you create less of a need for more stuff. No longer will you have to wander around a supermarket grabbing staples that you bring home and try to piece together into something appetizing. By meal planning, you create the puzzle at home and only need to go out and pick up the remaining pieces, if there are any. The first time I tried meal planning, I was sold when my grocery bill was only $28! Especially since I hadn't been shopping in over two weeks!

There are many ways to plan out your meal. The free guide I downloaded listed at least four methods: weekly, biweekly, monthly, and seasonal. My meal plans have mainly been on a weekly basis. Once I managed to do biweekly, because I was trying to make it through to my next CSA pick-up. It was pretty awesome having that much planned and out of the way. Right now, a biweekly schedule would work best for me because my winter CSA pick ups are every other week. Once the weather gets warmer, I will have to cut it back down to weekly since I wont be knowing what my fridge looks like until a day or two before the pick up.Weekly and biweekly plans can be run basically the same way. It all depends how often you want to go shopping.

It pretty much boils down to doing inventory and putting the pieces together. The whole process can take up to an hour. I started a simple binder filled with loose leaf paper and I work with two pages open in front of me. On the left page, I make three columns: Cabinets, fresh/fridge, freezer. Then, I list everything. EVERYTHING. The most emphasis will go towards what you have in your fresh/fridge column. The idea is to use up anything that may go bad first. When making my inventory list, I like to put stars next to the most perishable items. That way I can plan accordingly to eliminate waste.

Next I sit down and create a calendar with the right page. Usually three lines per day, so I can name the meal, list out what on hand ingredients I will use, and then list the ones I need. As the calendar comes together, I will also write down tasks for each day. This usually consists of prep work that can be done the night before, such as taking meat out of the freezer to thaw or chopping veggies.

Some meals come to mind almost instantly. Others not so much. Sometimes it helps to put themes into effect. I don't do this everyday, but it does help when you get stuck. Mondays are obviously meatless. Tuesdays are usually always crock pot dishes, because we need to be changed and fed within an hour to get Sophia to dance on time. Wednesdays will be a larger meal because it is a night home. Thursdays tends to be a leftovers day or I will cook a second meal on Wednesday to have Thursday, since Sophia has another night of dance and we go directly after school. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are always free days. I plan them out, but there is no rhyme or reason. I just follow where my ingredients lead.

Another useful tool is Google. I've said it before, Google is my favorite cookbook! You may have some odd and end ingredients that you have no idea what to do with...Google them together! A search of "steak beans mustard" may actually surprise you. I just came up with that combination off the top of my head, but I googled it and came up with a recipe for beef with black beans and rice. There are so many dishes out there using what is already in your kitchen if you just take the time to find them! Stop spending your money on things you don't even realize you already have.

After my calendar is all filled out, I create my shopping list of only what is needed for my meals. Maybe once a month I will do a big trip to replenish the staples, such as pasta and beans. It has been working out that my weekly grocery bill, if I even need to go at all, stays under $30. It is really helpful to my budget to be able to stay well under $150 in groceries per month. I suggest you give it a shot. An hour of planning may seem a lot, but time is worth money and you will be saving a lot of that!

"Monday" Beans and Chicken

This is a recipe that I sat on for a while. I have no idea where I found it, but I really liked the story, so I copied it into my recipe notebook. Then I promptly forgot all about it. So months later....

While I was doing last week's meal plan, I knew I was going to use the local, free range, and organic chicken thighs that I received from my Greensgrow Farm winter CSA. Since this meat was such amazing quality, I had to make sure I used it to its full advantage. Normally I would make stock from chicken bones, but the story of Monday beans and chicken randomly popped into my head. I love when great food ideas strike! Only problem: I could not seem to remember where I found the recipe. I googled it for days to no avail. I could find the story, but no recipe. Finally I remembered that I had written it down in my book. I would seriously lose my head if it...actually, I think sometimes I do.

The name of this recipe derives from an old Southern tradition. On Sunday nights, families would sit down together for a nice dinner of either or ham. Any leftovers, including bones, were thrown into a pot of beans on Monday. This pot would slowly cook on the stove through the day, while the women would spend the day doing laundry. Sometimes this dish is called Laundry Day or Wash Day Beans.

Obviously, I cannot enjoy "Monday" beans and chicken on a Meatless Monday, but I do like it's logic. I think this is a great idea for Sunday dinner. I prepared a quick and easy dinner of roasted chicken thighs on Saturday night and then let this dish cook in the Crock Pot, while I attempted to get a handle on the remaining Christmas mess. Thankfully the dinner was much more successful than my attempts at being productive.

• 1lb beans, whichever type you chose - soaked overnight
• 1lb leftover (cooked) chicken or ham with the bones if you still have them
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 Tbsp Parsley
• 1 Tbsp ground black pepper
• pinch cayenne pepper
• 2 cups water
• 1 Qt Broth
• 2 bay leaves

Place all ingredients in Crock Pot. Be sure broth and water covers meat and beans. Add more water, if needed. Cook on high for an hour, then set to low and continue to cook for 7 hours. Remove bones and bay leaves. Serve as soup or over rice.

As always, I went a little off recipe. That always seems to happen, according to what I have on hand. Better to use what you have than let it go to waste, just because you went and bought something else. I used a little over half a pound of white beans and I couldn't tell you the exact weight of the meat that was used. It wound up being the meat off two thighs and four thigh bones. Surprisingly, that gave me a decent amount of meat in my final product. This recipe really does lend itself to variety, since you can switch up your beans and types of meat. I will be definitely be trying many different variations in the future. I would recommend only using the larger bones if you are using a chicken, so you can pull them out easily.

Either because I went off recipe with my amount of beans or because this is a southern meal, but this meal is hot! It was way too spicy to even attempt to feed to Sophia. Luckily, I had some odds and ends of leftovers that she could eat for dinner. While it was super spicy, it was not too overpowering for me. So if you don't like it hot, try and cut down on the amount of pepper OR be sure to have a large glass of water and a piece of bread to go alongside your meal.