Pasta E Fagioli

Wyatt and I spent a good portion of the day at my mom's, where she whipped up this fantastic chili-esque soup off the top of her head. So jealous...

Pasta E Fagioli

1/2 lb ground beef

Small pasta, such as ditalini, orzo, or shells

2 cans diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 cup carrots, sliced thin

1 small onion, minced

1 can kidney beans, drained

1 can white navy beans, drained

1 cup water

2 cups beef broth

salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste

chili powder, optional

Boil water for pasta. In a large pot, add water and broth. Add celery and carrots and let them cook until soft. While they cook, brown the ground beef and start pasta. Add all other ingredients to large pot and heat thoroughly. Serve over pasta.

Banana Walnut Bread + recipe

 
3 bananas, mashed

¼ c. melted butter

1 egg, beaten

1 c. sugar

2 c. flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

½ c. walnuts, chopped (could use pecans instead)

Mash bananas first. It's easier to add the other ingredients this way. Try to use bananas that are overripe with some brown splotches on the peel. Bananas that are green or just ripened will be difficult to mash.

Combine everything in a large bowl and pour into a lightly greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees (325 if you're using a glass pan) for 45 minutes. Insert a toothpick - if it comes away clean, the bread is done. So simple and easy! And so delicious! I recommend it with a big cup of coffee...

- Mother Nature Mom

Freezer Cooking: The Planning Stage + easy Asian marinade recipe

I had every intention of going to the grocery store today, but it didn't happen. It was raining and dreary outside all day long. Plus, I'm still nursing a cold that I seem to have picked up after eating at my parents' house a few days ago. (Thanks, Mom!) So, I took the opportunity to make a list for everything I'll need for my Freezer Cooking Day.

Keep in mind, I plan on doing a very small FCD. Some people cook enough to last their families for an entire month (hence "once-a-month cooking") - and I'm talking breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm not that ambitious, and my freezer is not that big. And since this is the first time I'll be attempting a FCD, I'm going to start small.

I reevaluated my "to-make" list after looking in my cabinets and freezer, and based on Kenny's requests. As of right now, I'll be making:

Kenny's Mom's Spaghetti Sauce X2 (at least)

Lasagna

Asian marinated chicken and shrimp (using a marinade recipe found at Life as Mom)

Chicken Casserole X2 (using my friend, Kat's, recipe)

Mini burgers for bentos (using a recipe from the Just Bento cookbook)

MoneySavingMom has great printable worksheets to use for FCD. They make it simple to figure out what's already in your pantry/freezer, brainstorm recipe ideas, and shop for additional ingredients. There's also plenty of room for notes, and an additional page to write out prep work.

Here's what my lists look like. (Can you see my new Just Bento cookbook? And Kenny's Alton Brown cookbook?) There's another printable sheet to write out recipes, but I already have mine printed on index cards.

I gave the Asian marinade a trial run tonight for dinner, just to see if it we'd want it again. It was delicious! I deviated slightly from Life As Mom's recipe, because I didn't have any sesame oil on hand:

7 Tbsp rice vinegar (mine is basil and oregano infused)
3 Tbsp soy sauce (I used lite)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 cup oil (I used olive oil)

The original calls for a tablespoon of sesame oil, which probably kicks up the Asian-ness a bit. I compensated with an extra tablespoon of the rice vinegar. I marinated three fairly large chicken breasts in a Ziploc bag in the fridge overnight, then cooked them on top of the stove. They stayed very moist and tender. I served them alongside whole wheat penne pasta and corn. Pretty delicious.

I'm planning on grocery shopping tomorrow, weather and illness permitting. It's time to see what this freezer cooking business is all about!

- Mother Nature Mom

Christmas Cookies! + recipes

Yay, cookies!

One of my all-time favorite Christmas memories is making cookies with my mom. As a kid, I'd stand on a chair so I could reach the counter, wearing a homemade, decorated apron. (I can't remember if I decorated it or if my mom did.) My mom would mix up the ingredients and cut out the shapes, and my dad would ice them after they'd been baked. I was on sprinkle patrol, artfully arranging sugar ornaments on the Christmas trees, nonpareil scarves on snowmen, and red holly berries on wreathes. Or, you know, just dumping them in the center of the cookie and moving on. (I became more conscious of sprinkle coverage and sprinkle-to-cookie ratio with age.)

We've used different recipes over the years, especially for our cut-out cookies. Here's this year's lot:

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

2 cups white sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. (We wound up using a hand mixer to get out the lumps.) Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour. (I recommend overnight, however. The dough was still very sticky after the initial hour.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out dough on sugared* surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with your favorite cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. (We used parchment paper. No need to worry about the cookies sticking!) If dough starts to become sticky again, simply add a little more confectioner's sugar. Storing the dough in fridge between batches also helps.

Bake 6 to 8 minutes. Cool.

For homemade icing, mix a little water with confectioner's sugar until smooth but not runny. Add vanilla, almond, or lemon extract and food coloring! Spread over cooled cookies and add sprinkles if desired. (Oh, I desire sprinkles.)

Yield: 5 dozen

*You could use flour here instead, but using too much could make the cookies come out, well, flour-y. Confectioner's sugar achieves the same goal, and adds a little extra sweetness.

 

Spiced Crackle Cookies

(Kenny loves these, and jealously guards them every year.)

These cookies are the perfect balance of soft, moist, and crispy. If you're a fan of ginger snaps, you'll love these.

Ingredients:

½ cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

¼ cup molasses

1 egg

2 cup flour

¾ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 Tbsp ground ginger
½ tsp cinnamon

1 Tbsp crystallized ginger, chopped

¾ cup confectioner's sugar

Directions:

In large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, and molasses with hand mixer on medium speed until blended. Beat in egg until blended, scraping down side of bowl. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, and cinnamon in clean bowl. Add to butter mixture; beat on low speed until blended. Stir in crystallized ginger. Cover; refrigerate 1 hr.

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly coat two large baking sheets with nonstick cooking spray (or use parchemnt paper.) Place confectioner's sugar in bowl. Roll pieces of dough into 1 inch balls; then roll in confectioner's sugar to completely coat. Place on prepared baking sheets at least 2 inches apart.

Bake at 350 for 11 minutes, or until cookies have expanded and flattened; the tops will be covered with cracks. Let cookies cool on baking sheets on wire rack 2 minutes. Transfer cookies directly to racks; let cool completely.

Try not to eat them all at once. =)

Yield: 3 dozen

So there you have it. What goodies are you enjoying this Christmas?

- Mother Nature Mom

A delicious find + recipe

This is a little overdue, but I had to share this recipe that I discovered from the blog Open Mouth Insert Cookie (how great is that name?) I came across this recipe for Pumpkin Bread Pudding kind of randomly, i.e. looking at bentos. Another bento-er had linked to this lovely blog, and I knew I had to try this recipe as soon as I read it. So fall-esque! True, the weather seems to have turned towards winter for good (and about time - thanks, middle Georgia!), but I'm sharing nonetheless. =)

Life with an 8-month-old + slow cooker recipe

It's Tuesday again, but for once I'm not in school! I'm currently sitting on my couch, listening to the men in my life snore as they both take a nap. Gotta love Fall Break! Wyatt looks especially cute today in his Halloween onesie that a friend of Kenny's bought for him. I'm so glad, too, considering I looked high and low for a cute Halloween shirt/outfit and couldn't find one in his size! He may be 8 months old, but he's wearing mostly 12 month clothes, and I've definitely noticed a gap in sizes while shopping for his fall/winter wardrobe. Newborn-9 months? Check. 18-24 months? Check. 9-18 months? Yeah, not so much.

I'm extremely tired today, due mostly to the fact that Wyatt kept waking up last night. His top two front teeth are coming in (finally!) and it's definitely upsetting him. Add on top of that the fact that every time he wakes up, he decides to sit Indian style in his crib and bang his head on the wooden rail until I go in and either pick him up or lay him back down. (Kids can be so weird...) The crib bumper isn't tall enough to cover the space between the mattress and the top of the rail, so it looks as if we'll have to lower the mattress again. (And by "we" I totally mean "Kenny.") He's really come a long way developmentally in the last week or so; it's amazing to watch. He can now crawl backwards a good ways, go from sitting Indian style to being on his tummy and back again, and he even stood up using the couch for support for a few seconds yesterday! And then he fell and bumped his head on his bouncy chair and commenced to wailing, but that's neither here nor there... He's finally getting the hang of crawling forward, something he did for the first time two days ago on his 8-month birthday...

Am I a proud momma? You bet I am.

Anyway, as happy as I am watching my little man grow, he's wearing me out! And so even on my day off, I decided to bring out the slow cooker.

I've been on an Asian kick for awhile now in case you didn't notice, so when I searched Allrecipes.com yesterday for meal ideas, this recipe for slow cooker oriental chicken immediately caught my eye. Even better, I already had all of the ingredients!

I decided to stick pretty close to the recipe this time, only adding a teaspoon of orange peel. I also used chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken. (I didn't grow up eating a lot of dark meat, so I tend to shy away from it in my cooking. Plus, white meat is healthier.) The original also calls for sliced almonds as a garnish, which I forgot to buy at the grocery store. Not a major component, so I didn't worry about it.

3 chicken breasts
2 Tbsp vegetable oil (could also use olive oil, or similar)
1/3 c soy sauce (I used lite)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp water
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp orange peel

Coat the bottom of a pan with the oil and brown the chicken. Mix together the rest of your ingredients while chicken cooks. Then place chicken in the bottom of slow cooker and pour mixture over chicken. Cook on high for one hour, then low for 4-5 hours.

Several of the reviewers at Allrecipes.com complained of not having enough sauce to accompany the chicken, and they turned out to be right. Like many of them, I mixed the juice from a can of pineapple with a little cornstarch and added this about 30 minutes before mealtime. I added the pineapple, too, just to warm it up a bit. I steamed broccoli and baby carrots and made brown rice. Delicious! And still enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow and Thursday's bento...

Now I'm off to do the dishes. One requirement for our next house - must have a dishwasher!

- Mother Nature Mom

It's Fall! It's Fall! + a recipe that needs help!

That's right! Fall is officially here! It may not feel like it just yet, but it's only a matter of time. So many fun events are on the horizon: Fall break at school (which is really only one day for me), Halloween, and various arts and crafts festivals in the area. The unfortunately named Possum Hollow was yesterday in nearby Dexter, GA. We had a lot of fun! Wyatt especially loved looking at the fair rides spinning and zooming about. I kept telling him that he's still a bit too young for those rides!

I recently attempted this slow cooker recipe with less-than-stellar results. It should have been great - pork tenderloin cooking in apple cider all day? Hello? But, the result was under seasoned and dry pork. I made minimal changes to the recipe - I used apple juice instead of apple cider, because I had it in my fridge. I also did not brown the pork beforehand. Like one All Recipes commenter said, "Don't make anything more time consuming than it has to be." I couldn't agree more. Still, these changes should not have affected the overall outcome. So, instead of delicious awesomeness, we ate so-so okayness.

If anyone has a tip to improve upon this recipe, feel free to comment! I'm more than willing to attempt this again.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of the greatest season of the year!

- Mother Nature Mom

Slow cooker gumbo - Louisiana fare the easy way! + recipe

Kenny's been bugging me for awhile to make gumbo, something I had never made or even tasted before. I was willing to try, but with our schedules the way they are, I wasn't willing to stand over the stove for any great length of time in the evening, losing precious time that could be spent playing with Wyatt, doing homework, making baby food, etc. So, I searched the information super highway for a slow cooker gumbo recipe and found quite a bit to work with!

Kenny's family is from Louisiana, so he's used to having really great, authentic Cajun and creole cuisine. No competition, right?

I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised with how my slow cooker gumbo turned out. I had my reservations about it, but with a little tweaking, I think this will become a great stand-by recipe. Kenny liked it, too, and he's super picky about his gumbo. Actually, he's super picky about everything, defying my logic about all things male...

I used this recipe as a guide:

3 cups chicken broth
1 lb chicken breast, cut into pieces
1 lb spicy sausage, cut into pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
1-2 cups okra, sliced
1 green pepper, chopped
2-3 stalks celery, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper
salt to taste

roux:
1/3 cup flour
1/3 oil

I omitted the okra, added chopped tomato, left out the red pepper, and subbed garlic powder since I didn't have any garlic on hand. I'll probably use okra next time, and may or may not add tomato. I liked it, but Kenny didn't care for it.

I also didn't make the roux from scratch, like I thought I would. Kenny found instant roux at the grocery store, so I used that instead.

For homemade roux, stir together the flour and oil in a saucepan until smooth. Cook over medium-high heat for 4 minutes, stirring constantly. (Important!) Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring constantly (!), for about 15 minutes more or until roux is dark reddish brown. Let roux cool.

Add the chicken broth to your slow cooker, and stir in homemade or instant roux. Add all other ingredients, cover, and cook on low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-5 hours. Serve over rice. You could also add shrimp towards the end of the cooking process. Just add them to the slow cooker about 20 minutes before you plan to eat.

This made a lot! I made this on Thursday, and we finished up the leftovers this afternoon. Of course, there's just the two of us, but we did go back for seconds quite a bit!

I can't stress enough just how much my slow cooker helps bring a little more order into my hectic schedule. If you don't already have one, it's well worth the investment!

-Mother Nature Mom

Hectic schedule? Slow cooker to the rescue! (+ recipe)

When I said in my last post that life was about to become extremely hectic, I think I underestimated a little!

I started Fall semester at GCSU last Tuesday, and I definitely have my work cut out for me! I'm taking four classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 AM - 4:45 PM, with a roughly two hour lunch break in between class #2 and #3. I'm pretty grateful for that break too, since it gives me time to catch up on any reading that I may have missed (it happens - sleep has been elusive lately, since Little Man is still teething, so I sleep whenever I can) or to get a little homework out of the way. It also gives me plenty of time to eat lunch! Since I definitely can't afford to buy lunch on campus everyday, I've started packing bento lunches. I'll talk about bentos in further detail in a later post, but for now, go check out Just Bento, a wonderful site that includes lots of how-tos, recipes, and more for packing healthy lunches for work, school, and everywhere in between. (And in case it isn't obvious from the website, yes, bentos are Japanese, which only fuels my love for the Land of the Rising Sun!)

Since I leave so early in the morning to go to school (it's roughly a 45-minute commute, depending on traffic), I've begun the habit of using my slow cooker on school days. There is nothing I want less than to cook after being at school all day and driving home on long and lonely highway 441. Slow cooking really is a gift from the gods - I can turn it on when I walk out the door and it's done when I come home. I really love my slow cooker. It's actually a hand-me-down... it was one of my parents' wedding presents! I'll probably cry the day it finally gives in to the big sleep. I mean, it is rather old. My parents have been married for... well, we won't go there.

Using the slow cooker also gives me a chance to experiment, which is what I did last Tuesday. I found this recipe at Allrecipes.com, which sounded interesting enough. I then found where a reader customized it, and was convinced that I had to try it. Here's my customized version of the customization. ;)

2 1/2 lb pork tenderloin
1 large onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
6 new potatoes, quartered
1 bag baby carrots

1 cup hot water
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp ketchup
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp hot sauce
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp paprika
dash Worcestershire sauce

1. Arrange new potatoes, garlic, carrots, and onion in bottom of slow cooker.
2. Mix together last 12 ingredients (from hot water to bottom of list) in measuring cup or small pitcher.
3. Puncture pork loin with fork or knife in several places (this lets the "sauce" flavor the meat better). Place in slow cooker. (I had to cut mine in half to get it to fit. It might even be better to cut it into fourths so the meat falls apart when done.)
4. Pour wet mixture over pork.
5. Set slow cooker to low for 8-10 hours or high for 5-6 hours.
6. Serve over rice, egg noodles, or mashed potatoes (Kenny's favorite.)

I'll definitely be making this again. I might add a little cornstarch next time to thicken the sauce into more of a gravy. While I loved the carrots and potatoes, Kenny wasn't a fan. (He says that they didn't taste like carrots and potatoes - they tasted like the sauce, to which I said, "That's the point." To each their own.) I made garlic mashed potatoes for him to eat with the leftovers we had tonight. And there's still enough for me to take some to school tomorrow for lunch! Definitely excited about that.

With what little time I have left tonight, I'm going to attempt to make some more baby food for Little Man... that is, if he lets me! Teething has his sleep schedule completely out of whack, so he's already woken up twice tonight. Crossing my fingers...

- Mother Nature Mom