mehr Sauerkraut?

More sauerkraut?


Why yes, I'll take some more sauerkraut! Del Ray Fresh Market has their cabbage for .28/lb this week. Sauerkraut is the easiest thing in the world to can. Jars & lids, cabbage, salt, boiling water and a little processing time creates a wonderful homemade sauerkraut that is ready to go in about two weeks. Love the stuff! Made some in the slow cooker last week with a package of Hillshire Farm Lil Smokies. I didn't even cook anything else to go with it because I liked it so much. 


So yeah, when produce is at that great of a price, guess who's making some more??? Yum!

Teriyaki and YumYum Sauce

The handy little widget at the top of the page here reminded me that squash is in season. That reminded me that at Kroger this week, zucchini and yellow squash are on sale for $1 per pound. Take the opportunity to turn fall's squash harvest into the culinary deliciousness of my version of Teriyaki. I usually use chicken breast but you can use any other quick cooking type of tender meat you like or even leave the meat out altogether if that's what you wanna do. I've made this dish with shrimp, chicken and diced up boneless pork chops. Everyone loves it all the same. The secret is in the sauce. Use this sauce on anything and your diners will think the sun rises and sets according to your will. Fact. 




The Sun Rises & Sets Per My Will Teriyaki Sauce
Enough sauce to make food for six or so. Easily doubled if you'd like more.


1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon cold water

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

• Dissolve cornstarch in cold water. Use COLD water or it won't dissolve properly. The end result will be a lumpy sauce. We don't want that. 
• Add the dissolved cornstarch mix and everything else to a sauce pot. Stir frequently while simmering over medium high heat until sugar dissolves and mixture thickens. It won't take long for it to come to a boil. Once it does, it's thickened. Cornstarch works wonders for sauces!
• Set aside for use with the rest of the ingredients.

The rest of the ingredients:

• Diced raw chicken breast, raw or frozen medium shrimp, diced boneless pork chops, diced tofu, strips of stir fry beef. Allow 4-5 ounces per person.
• 4-5 zucchini, cut into 2" thick pieces. Quarter them while whole and then slice into pieces. 
• A couple medium onions, roughly chopped
• Mushrooms, halved
• Large green bell pepper, roughly chopped
• Head of broccoli, florets cut apart

Feel free to add more, omit or add different veggies. Often the restaurants that serve teriyaki use carrots in the mix, too. If you like carrots, add em. Just be sure they're sliced thinly so they will cook quickly. Want more color with a diced red or orange bell pepper? Sure! Want mushrooms but not broccoli? That's fine, too. Want a veggie dish of nothing but squash and onions with sauce? Have at it! Make it your own by tinkering with your favorite tastes. The list above is a representation of what I use when I make this dish. 

Now what to do with all this stuff you've prepped:

• Heat a bit of oil in a frying pan on medium high heat. Have the pan's lid handy to speed up cooking time. If using chicken, cook until juices run clear or the pieces are white throughout. If using shrimp, cook 2-3 minutes. Pork needs to be cooked until pieces are white throughout. Tofu cooked until browned. Beef until desired doneness. 
• A couple minutes or so before meat is finished cooking, add enough sauce to lightly coat all the pieces. Continue cooking on medium high heat until sauce really sticks to the meat. This takes 3-4 minutes or so. Transfer the meat to a large serving dish. I find that a large casserole dish works well for this recipe. 
• Saute the veggies in the same fashion, starting with the onions. Cook the onions until translucent (five minutes or so), then douse with a bit of sauce. I like to start with the onions because they impart such a wonderful flavor to everything else that comes after them. Too, the pieces are thin. Once your frying pan has had a bit of the sauce introduced to it, it tends to get a little sticky due to the sugar. We don't want our onions sticking to the pan, so doing them first is a good way to avoid that problem. 
• Saute the rest of the veggies separately and just dump them in the casserole dish with everything else. This order works best for me: Onions, bell pepper, broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms. We'll mix it all up when we're done so don't worry about that at the moment. Just concern your lil' ol' self with making sure you don't cook the crisp out of the veggies. Broccoli is GREEN. Zucchini is also GREEN. Don't cook either of them til they lose their color! This is where the lid comes in very handy. It will trap the steam for ya and keep the broccoli and zucchini from sitting in the pan for too long. Keeping the beautiful color of the veggies will entice your eyes while the crisp but tender texture will keep your mouth interested. Do the mushrooms last. They have a lot of water and will cause the other veggies to boil rather than saute. We don't want that :( 
• Now mix up all those layers you just cooked. Serve with simple plain white steamed rice. If you prefer a healthier option, have it with brown rice. For people watching their carb intake, this is really good just on its own too. 

And what's teriyaki without the classic YumYum sauce? You know, the thick light pink-peach colored dressing the chef pours out for you in the individual containers at your place setting? The stuff you probably ask for refills as you're eating? :) Yeah, we've got a recipe for that too. 

You're Gonna Ask For Refills YumYum Sauce (aka Japanese Steakhouse White Sauce)

1-1/4 cup	Quality brand mayonnaise
1/4 cup	water
1 teaspoon	tomato paste
1 tablespoon	melted butter
1/2 teaspoon	garlic powder
1 teaspoon	sugar
1/4 teaspoon	paprika
dash	cayenne pepper

• Using a fork or a whisk, blend all ingredients together thoroughly until well mixed and the sauce is smooth. Refrigerate overnight to allow flavors to blend. Bring to room temperature before serving

• I mentioned a quality brand of mayo because of what I wrote about in yesterday's entry. Use quality brands when the ingredients of your dish are minimal and only a few ingredients are competing for top taste billing. We want our sauce to taste like Japanese steak house white sauce, not bad mayonnaise, right? Preparing it the day before to allow proper blending of the flavors will also keep it tasting like YumYum sauce instead of mayo.

Your Americanized Japanese Teriyaki dinner is ready to go at this point. Call me when it's time to eat! I'll even bring my own chopsticks :)

Shopping Tips or "Hey, I'm pretty cheap and here's how I do it..."

As the tremendous need for jobs remains as high as ever and folks have to really watch their budgets, it can't hurt to have more tips on how to more economically shop for the things we use to create wonderful meals. Some of my pointers may be things you've heard before, some may not. Take from this list what will work for you and your family. Once you've done that please comment below to share with me your tips on how to most economically feed those you care about. 

• Evaluate your needs before purchasing kitchen hardware and invest in quality cooking hardware. When I say "hardware," I'm talking about knives, appliances large and small, gadgets, utensils, cookware, storage containers and anything else that goes in your kitchen that isn't food. Quality hardware doesn't always mean you spend the most money. Matter of fact, often the expense of an item has more to do with a fancy label or celebrity endorsement than the quality of the item. Use common sense: Do you have to have a $600 professional stand mixer if the extent of your mixing activity is a couple cake batters a year? Probably not. Would you be disappointed in an $8 hand mixer if you bake ten dozen cookies per week as a way to earn extra income? Yeah, I'd say so. Even if you weren't disappointed, the quality of your end product would suffer sooner rather than later. Plus the $8 mixer isn't going to last long with usage like that! Most of us who enjoy cooking as a hobby fall somewhere between those two extremes. When you need to purchase kitchen hardware, look for reviews. They're all over the Internet. Read reviews from several different places. My personal rule of thumb is this: If I'm spending more than $50 on a product, I get as much feedback from other users as I can find. I work hard for my $50 and I know you do too. Make it count.
• Look beyond the obvious places for your purchases. Sure, retail stores are fun. Everything there is nice, new and shiny. They have sales, gifts with purchase, free samples and sometimes demonstrations. Depending on where you shop, you may have a very knowledgeable sales staff to help you select the best product for your needs. (I'll not get into a rant about sales staff who have no clue how to do anything but make commission while checking their phones for texts while you wait. No, that's for another day!) I'm encouraging you to go off the beaten path for your kitchen finds. Flea markets, yard sales, estate sales, thrift stores, restaurant supply stores and even organizing a kitchen swap with friends are all good ways to find needed products on the cheap (or free!). Thrift stores are the absolute best places to pick up plates and platters to use as gifts or for transporting food to another location. When you see those three plates with a design you like for .25 each, go ahead and get them. Use one to wrap up a plate of fudge for a friend's birthday. Use another as a part of a gift set with a coordinating kitchen towel and serving spoon. The third one can be used to take those sandwiches you promised to the dinner party with friends. You don't have to stick around until everyone leaves to get your dish back if you only paid 25 cents for it. Or maybe you do want to take it back home because you really like it...your choice!
• Shop for food with sale prices and products in mind. This, too, means some off the beaten path shopping spots. Find a farmer's market, fruit stand, co-op or pick-your-own farm in your community. You'll be getting fresher food at prices that almost always beat any chain while supporting your local economy. You're reducing your carbon footprint and eating more healthful, more flavorful food at the same time. Plan your meals around what you already have on hand and/or what's on sale, not necessarily the meal that's being requested. 

Example:

The five people you're feeding want chicken fingers for dinner. You're capable and willing to do homemade but you don't have any tenders in the freezer because chicken hasn't been on sale in a couple weeks. To do chicken tenders, you can pay $4.59/lb for chicken tenderloins, $3.99 for boneless breast or $1.99/lb for split bone-in breast with skin. You opt for the $4.59 tenderloins. You estimate a serving of 6 ounces per person. You need 30 ounces total, or 1.875 lbs, for a cost of $8.60. This purchase will satisfy the entree portion of meal with no leftovers. 

..............or..............consider a less expensive alternative with pork picnic (roast) that's on sale for .99/lb: 

For the same $8.60, you walk out of the store with over eight and a half pounds of pork roast. You would be able to make four and a half meals out of that. (8.5 lbs x 16 ounces per pound = 136 ounces. 136/5 people = 27.2 ounces per person. 27.2/6 ounces per serving = 4.53 meals. I'm thinking pork roast with seasoned rice and veggies tonight. Pork burritos tomorrow night. BBQ pork sandwiches with coleslaw sometime next week with what I have leftover that I'll freeze after the first two meals. Some kind of Asian soup with pulled pork three weeks from now with the remaining portion of what I stuffed into the freezer. 

.....or even this if you just gotta do chicken....

Get the bone in breast with skin for $1.99/lb. Cut those breasts up yourself. Reserve the bones and skin for delicious, hearty soup stock. (Yes, some of the original weight is lost with this but it is still much more economical than tenderloin pieces!) At $1.99/lb, you leave the store with 4.3 lbs, or 68.8 ounces for $8.58. Still basing our meals on the same 6 ounce portion with five hungry tummies, we have enough for two and a third meals: 4.3 lbs x 16 ounces per pound = 68.8 ounces. 68.8/5 people = 13.76 ounces per person. 13.76/6 ounces per serving = 2.29 meals. Chicken tenders tonight. Chicken noodle soup with the rest of the chicken and the stock I made from the bones and skin.

Or you could have your one entree of about four chicken tenders per person for that same $8.60.

Or you could wait until that same bone-in breast is on sale for $.99/lb and cut these prices in half!

****The lesson here: stop buying convenience prepped items unless you find them at a price low enough to make up for the time you'd otherwise spend prepping it! It takes only a sharp knife, a cutting board and a few seconds to turn that split breast into chicken tenders! Stop paying the butcher to do what you can do at home!****

• Know when to splurge on higher quality food items. Does your dish have only a few ingredients or a couple key ingredients that really stand out? I prefer White Lily flour and Crisco vegetable shortening to make biscuits because the quality of those ingredients makes a big difference in the end product. Why? Well, because my biscuits are only comprised of self-rising flour (I know, I know. Real chefs use plain flour and add the other junk to it. For my purposes, it doesn't make a difference), shortening and buttermilk. When there are only three ingredients, each one counts a lot! Biscuits made with lower quality flour or shortening just aren't as good. I've tried it before. They don't rise as well and they even have a kind of sticky texture in the middle. Blek. NOT what I want to serve to my guests or eat myself! My guests are worth the extra cost for better quality food, as am I. Make bad food with poor ingredients and you throw more of it away than what you should. Spend the few extra cents in places where it matters. When you're adding those frozen corn kernels to a huge vat of soup that's comprised of 17 other ingredients, who cares if they're off brand? Each bowl will only have a few kernels anyway and no one will be any wiser if it's Green Giant Select or Southern Home brand. 
• While we're on the topic...PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't serve margarine to yourself or your guests!!! Life's too short to eat fake plastic butter! And dear Gawd in heaven----don't even think of baking or sauteing with it!!! In addition to tasting horrible, margarine has a high water content. Your food won't brown properly when sauteing and baked goods will be all kind of screwed up and disgusting. Just don't buy margarine and everything in the world will be better, okay? 

I'm sure there will be more tips/semi-rants to come but I think this is enough to think about for the moment. Please share your thoughts/tips/rants on how you shop smart for your kitchen and food. 

Alright, alright, alright!

After a couple prods from a friend who is interested in my cooking and has encouraged me to give it a home of its own, I'm here. Natasha has asked me more than once to put my cooking experiences, photos and adventures in one place. 


"You really should start a food blog," she has said when I've posted various images of my culinary creations. "I'll subscribe and read all your entries. It would be so interesting!"


So here I am. I haven't blogged in years and even when I have previously, there's not been much to write about. Yeah, it always seemed like a big deal at the time but hindsight is--as they say--20/20. Mostly was rants about failed/failing romantic relationships, dumb people or whatever other general whining a 20-something Gen X'er has to say about the world around her. 


At this point in my life, I've developed an appreciation for things other than dwelling on the "normal" path my life didn't take. The graduate-high-school-go-to-college-get-engaged-get-married-have-2.5 kids-become-a-soccer-mom-go-to-PTA-meetings path just wasn't in the cards for me, or at least it hasn't been yet. That's all well and good because it leaves time for me to do other things, such as give in to persistent friends who have encouraged my creative side to become a little more organized :) 


I chose the name for this blog because I find myself saying that so often in regard to the foods I prepare:

"Come have dinner with me. There's more than enough." 

"Take a plate home with you for later. There's more than enough."

"We're going to have a boatload of food. Bring a friend/your spouse/girlfriend/kids. There's more than enough."

"Pack a bowl up for your mama & them. There's more than enough."

I so enjoy sharing my meals with others! It's an honest-to-goodness pleasure for me. There's something so satisfying for me about combining individual ingredients in just the right way to create something that makes others happy. It's such a compliment when someone goes for a second helping, asks for the recipe I've used or tells me he's stuffed silly because he can't stop eating it simply because it tastes good, regardless of the fact that he was full ten bites ago. So as much I enjoy making others happy, it makes ME very happy in return. 


Since I worked last night and I have to work tonight, this is really all I have time for right now. I'll be back within a couple days though. Let me know what recipe and photo(s) you'd like to see, okay?