Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Busy Gardening Week

Friday (we watched a movie while eating pizza -- The Russians Are Coming, 1966, comedy)

scratch pepperoni pizza

canned green beans

celery sticks

gingered pear crumble (frozen pears)

Saturday

cook-out

hot dogs (the uncured beef ones -- Marketside from Walmart), with all the relishes but no buns

canned corn

red and green slaw

dried fruit from the freezer

Sunday

scratch refried beans, salsa and cheese

oven-fried corn tortilla chips (using plain corn tortillas)

avocado slices

orange wedges

Monday

tuna-macaroni salad (with a couple of boiled eggs, some thawed frozen peas and fresh celery in the salad)

avocado slices

steamed spinach (from frozen)

chocolate chip cookies

Tuesday

beef stew over baked potatoes (Need to use up the wrinkly potatoes. Baked seemed the way to go)

crabapple-applesauce (both frozen, thawed then mixed together for taste)

chocolate chip cookies

Wednesday

beet green and potato frittata (this night I used the worst of the wrinkly potatoes, peeled, sliced very thin, and placed at the bottom of the frittata. Turned out well.)

mixed vegetables (from frozen)

rhubarb crumble (first cutting of rhubarb this season, the freezer stash is now gone)

Thursday

ground beef and broccoli stir fry (frozen broccoli cuts, which are less expensive than broccoli florets)

brown rice

crabapple-applesauce (freezer stash)

It's been a super busy week, getting the garden worked and started the planting. We don't have a tiller, so I turn all the soil over with a shovel. It's back-strengthening work, if I don't keel over first. Anyway, meals needed to be simpler than usual. My favorite meal was the beef stew over baked potatoes. I had 3 large potatoes to use. So after baking I cut each into long quarters, and we each had 3 quarters. I smothered them with stew. It was a tasty way to have stew. I was hesitant to cube the potatoes to put into the stew. I wanted to leave the skin on for minerals. I thought the skins would fall off in the stew if I added them outright. I thought about making biscuits to go with the stew and skipping the potatoes. But baked potatoes was quicker as far as hands-on work went.

My other meal triumph was Thursday's dinner. I had a headache all day. Our neighbor is using a backhoe this week, all day every day. And it's noisy. Whether or not I would have had a headache anyway, having the added noise made it much worse. And then when he quit, our other neighbor began with a chainsaw on some trees. It was noisy today, and my head felt fragile. So I decided to do one of my quick meals. Ground beef, frozen vegetables, onions, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, black pepper, served over steamed rice. I had the applesauce and crabapple sauce thawed in the fridge and just needed to mix the two and serve. Aside from the time to steam the rice, the rest of dinner came together in under 30 minutes.

Our deep freeze is looking emptier and emptier these days. It's nice to be able to find what I'm looking for in there now. I do see several more containers of frozen cherries for pies. I might make a French cobbler with a container of cherries over the weekend. The small meat freezer is about half full now. We've used almost all of the chicken and most of the beef. I have a lot of chicken stock in there. I'll have to come up with ways to use some of it this weekend. Vegetable soup, perhaps? I need to thaw the two stand alone freezers beginning of June for one and early July for the other.

What was on your menu this week? What was your favorite meal? Did you make any particularly easy or quick meals this week?

Top That: My 5 Favorite Toppings for Baked Fruit Desserts

It's that time of year again. Time to start the fruit-based desserts for spring! I harvested the first of the rhubarb this morning. We'll mix rhubarb desserts with frozen pear, frozen plum, and frozen cherry desserts until the berries begin in mid to late June.

I thought I'd share my 5 favorite fruit dessert toppings and which fruits we enjoy them most on.

Streusel Crumb Topping

Streusel crumb topping is fine in texture and does best on firm fruits, where it won't fall beneath the surface of fruit. Think apple, pear, apple-blackberry, or apple-raspberry. I used this on a liquidy rhubarb and the crumb topping sunk beneath the surface on half of the individual cups of dessert. 

In addition to fruit crumbles, I use this to top pies, such as rhubarb-custard pie or Dutch apple pie. 

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened
pinch salt (optional)

Stir together dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Add a teaspoon of water to moisten. Bake on top of fruit filling until golden brown.

Enough for one fruit pie, a 9 X 12 baking dish of fruit crumble, or 10 individual custard cups of fruit crumble. If not using the full amount, store the remaining crumb topping in the refrigerator up to 3 months.

Crisp Oat Topping

An oat crumb topping works well on juicy fruits, such as stone fruits, berries, apples, pears, and rhubarb for making fruit crisps. The juices of the fruits soften the oats somewhat and add a nice texture.

If using this on apple crisp, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon cinnamon can be added to the crumb mixture. If using on a pear crisp, 1/2 teaspoon ginger can be added to the mixture.

1 cup flour

3/4 cup sugar, can be brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon  salt

1/2 cup shortening, butter, or vegetable oil

1 cup uncooked oats

Combine flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in shortening/butter. Stir in oats. Store in refrigerator in covered container up to 3 months, if not using full amount. For example, individual custard cups of crisp can be made 2 to 4 at a time, reserving remaining topping mix for future desserts.

For a 8 X 8 or 9 X 9 fruit crisp, top 4 cups of sweetened and thickened fruit filling with Crisp Oat Topping mix. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes at 375 degrees F, or until topping is golden.

French Cobbler Topping

What makes this French is an egg-based topping. It's delicious with cherries, raspberries, plums, rhubarb, and apples. This is my most commonly used cobbler topping. It has a cake-like texture, as opposed to a traditional American biscuit texture.

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 egg, slightly beaten

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Stir in egg.

To make a 9 X 9 or 8 X 8 French fruit cobbler:

Combine 4 to 5 cups fruit, sugar to sweeten, pinch, salt, 2 tablespoons flour, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract  and 1/2 cinnamon if desired. Spoon into buttered baking dish. Dollop fruit with batter above. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 to 40 minutes, until topping is golden and firm to finger press.

Scone Topping

I love make individual cobblers topped with scone dough. Since scones don't take long to bake, I use this on a pre-cooked fruit filling. Because the scone dough is firm, this works well where fruit may be very liquidy, such as topping rhubarb compote or even leftover rhubarb sauce.

This recipe is actually our family's scone recipe. I found it in an English country cooking cookbook years ago. I make this as plain scones or as bramble scones, adding fresh blackberries and cutting the milk to 2 tablespoons.

3/4 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons milk or cream.

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Stir together with milk/cream until a dough forms, adding a little extra milk, if needed. 

Cut dough into small rounds or wedges (2 large rounds patted out, cut into 4-6 wedges each).

To use Scone Topping, fill a butter 8 X 8 baking dish half full with sweetened and thickened cooked fruit filling. Top with cut scones. Bake at 385 for 15 minutes, until scones are golden and firm. The recipe can be halved for making 4 individual servings in custard cups, or remaining scone dough can be baked as scones on a baking sheet.

Drop Biscuit Topping

This is the topping that I've always known for peach cobbler, using juicy and sweet summer peaches. The recipe comes from my mother. It's how she made peach cobbler. The topping is only sweetened by a sprinkling of sugar over the batter. Topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a serving of this peach cobbler is summer in a bowl. 

2 cups flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 Tablespoons shortening or butter

3/4 cup milk

1 Tablespoon sugar

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in shortening or butter. Stir in milk. Should be a very thick batter.

To male a Drop Biscuit Cobbler, fill 8 X 12 or 7 X 11 buttered baking dish half full with sweetened, uncooked fruit (such as apple or fresh peach) filling. Drop biscuit dough in 8 portions, spaced evenly over the top of the fruit. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F and continue baking until topping is firm and golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. 

If using canned peaches, bake at 425 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes.

Just some notes:

You can substitute whole wheat flour for part of the all-purpose flour. I usually sub 1/4 whole wheat to 3/4 white, and it's pretty much undetectable. In the French cobbler topping, if I sub some whole wheat, I use brown sugar in place of white. I think the pairing of brown sugar with whole wheat flour is nice. Made that way, this is my favorite topping for blackberry cobbler in the very late summer.

For all of the toppings but the French cobbler topping, you can mix up the dry ingredients plus butter and make just a couple of individual servings in custard cups and store the remaining topping mixture in the fridge for up to 3 months, then make more individual servings another day. I actually prefer the individual custard cup fruit desserts as it helps with portion control, and they bake in less time. The reason the French cobbler topping doesn't work as well doing half now, half another day if it's more troublesome to halve an egg, and you can't keep a fully mixed batter in the fridge for more than a day. (The baking powder will fizzle out once moistened by the egg, and the raw egg should be cooked within a day or two.)

I do both pre-cooked fillings and uncooked fresh or frozen fruits as the fillings. Pre-cooking the filling helps me get the consistency right, while uncooked fruit means I have one less step to take to baking the dessert. Canned fruit, such as canned peaches, can be used in place of fresh with good results.

One last option, if for some reason you don't have a working oven, you're camping, or you want to keep the kitchen cooler, you can make cobblers on the stove, in the way chicken and dumplings are made. This is called a grunt. Cook the filling in a dutch oven or cast iron skillet. Once the filling is cooked and bubbling, drop biscuit dough (the French cobbler batter, drop biscuit batter, or scone dough batter thinned just slightly with extra milk or cream so that it will "drop") onto the fruit. Cover the pot or pan and allow the biscuit dough to steam over low to medium flame. The dumplings should be puffed and firm in about 15 minutes. The most traditional grunt is made with blueberries, although plums, cherries, peaches, apples, rhubarb, or blackberries also make good grunts. 

Happy baking, friends!

Do you know why I read cookbooks from the 1930s and 1940s?

What it is not. It is not nostalgia. It is not a passing fancy. It's not mere curiosity.

It is because I feel there are lessons to be learned from the ways of cooking and eating from those decades. 

This was a time of increasing knowledge of nutrition and the effects of poverty on life expectancy and health. This knowledge was shared with society through cookbooks, women's magazines, government-led education efforts (leaflets, flyers, films), radio broadcasts, and through student coursework. Cookbooks were a direct avenue to educate homemakers about how to cook to preserve nutrients, as well as what foods to include in meals to boost health.

Experts didn't getting everything right, though. To solve the problem of widespread hunger during the Great Depression, processed foods were pushed. Refined flours were thought to be a godsend. They kept longer, and whatever nutrients were lost in processing could just be added back (enriched). We now know that eating foods as close to how they are found in nature is actually better for long term health. We also believed that margarine would be not only just as good as butter, but even better for us. Today we know the dangers of trans fats. It was widely believed that canned foods were more hygienic that fresh produce and something of a modern miracle. To be certain, eating a can of beans is better than eating nothing. And perhaps hunger in the immediacy was more critical than long term health during a period of prolonged financial lack.

As I read these older cookbooks, I study not only what I believe they got right, but I also pay attention to where they were wrong. It's an important lesson to see where someone else believed in something that later was revealed to be wrong. (Does DDT come to mind?) It helps me question what today's "experts" are claiming is good for me and think it through for myself.

It seems to me, in all of our advancements, we've lost sight of what great nutrition looks like. We fill our grocery carts with processed foods. We are too busy to cook at home so we choose meals out that may rely on just as many convenience or enhancement products or chemicals. Do we read the labels on the loaf of bread we put in our shopping cart? Why does grocery store bread not grow mold after a week, whereas my homemade bread does? Is it really a great idea to eat preservative-laden foods? Are we just fooling ourselves to think that just because there's no visible mold on the commercial bread slice that of course it must be just as nutritious as the day it was baked? Bread begins to lose nutrients within about a week of baking, notably vitamins and antioxidants, if not frozen. 

These older cookbooks feature recipes that rely on foods as close to nature as we're likely to find in a grocery store. And the ingredient list is almost always limited to simple and easy to find products. During WW2, the British government studied the health and lifespan of its citizenry, comparing pre-war to post-war. Throughout the war, due to the inability to import as much food, they strongly encouraged people to grow food in whatever piece of dirt they had. The minister of food promoted heavy use of homegrown produce to stretch what little could be bought in shops. The population had a diet for several years that was much heavier in fruits and vegetables than had previously been seen (prior to the war). Throughout the war, the health of the population was monitored and evaluated. When the war came to an end, they observed a decline in infant mortality, an increased lifespan, and better overall nutritional health. So I look at this information and I see that they got something very right.

My mother recalled that after school snacks were limited to apples, bread, and water. Desserts were limited to Sunday dinners. My father recalled similar things about how they ate during both the depression and World War 2. The only beverages allowed at meals were orange or carrot juice at breakfast, milk or water at lunch and dinner. Sweetened drinks (homemade lemonade primarily) were for parties. Desserts in my father's childhood home almost always contained fruit. Chocolate bars were a rarity. The one junkier food that my father's family enjoyed often were potato chips. Every Saturday at lunch, he and his 4 siblings had a sandwich with potato chips. Weekday lunches contained some sort of sandwich, a piece of fruit, some raw vegetables, and he drank water from the fountain. After school, the kids in my father's family enjoyed bread and jam, a carrot, or a glass of milk as a snack before completing chores and homework. There were no energy bars, fruit snacks, pop-tarts, string cheese, yogurt cups, or granola bars. It's my understanding that the adults in my parents's respective families rarely snacked. And the kitchen was "open" for breakfast, lunch, after school snacks for kids, and dinner. At all other hours of the day the entire family knew the kitchen was "closed" to grazing. These older cookbooks rarely have any mention of snack recipes. The menus are explicitly for the "3 squares" a day.

Modern day commercial snack foods are often more expensive and lower in overall nutrients than regular meal foods. So following a pattern of eating much like those followed in the 30s and 40s should save money and improve my nutrient profile. When I want a snack, I typically have a spoonful of peanut butter, a slice of bread, or a piece of fruit or handful of raisins. By avoiding buying processed foods at the grocery store, I am forced into reliance on nutrient-dense foods that I do purchase or grow.

The other aspect that I really appreciate about these older cookbooks is their simple ingredient lists for each recipe. These recipes, for the most part (ignoring recipes like mock apple pie, a la Ritz crackers), call for the most basic ingredients, produce, meat, milk, cheese, eggs, common seasonings, herbs and spices, basic starchy foods, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, grains and other baking ingredients, and basic condiments such as vinegar, mustard, catsup, mayonnaise, pickles and relishes (often homemade), jams and jellies, horseradish, and chili sauce (like catsup, but less sweet, more spicy, and chunkier -- my grandmother loved chili sauce). With my digestive issues, I know which of those mentioned foods I can actually eat and not have after effects. A lot of modern recipes use at least one convenience food. It may be a can of prepared soup or a jarred sauce or a bag of tater tots. I avoid most convenience foods, sometimes because of an actual food contained (like milk) and sometimes because of an additive (like guar gum or methylcellulose).

And as a side benefit to simpler ingredient lists, almost all of these recipes are less expensive to make than buying similar convenience or prepared foods. Cooking simpler recipes is a large part of how I keep our grocery budget low. (Not buying convenience snack foods is the other part.) I save money, we eat better than we would otherwise, and I am hoping for a longer health-span for me and my family members.

I learn so much by studying these older cookbooks. In my quest to master extreme resourcefulness, frugality, and creativity born of necessity, I find these cookbooks to be blue prints of sorts in how to craft meal plans while providing nourishment and comfort from humble ingredients.

How much has cooking changed since 1939? And how much remains the same?

Would you like to see what my two daughters gave me for my birthday?

They went to the vintage district and found this cookbook. It's from 1939.

It's been interesting to look through to see what has changed and what still remains in the nearly 90 years since it's printing.

As this cookbook was compiled during the Great Depression, I thought viewing the included recipes and menus might best be done through the lens of budget-friendly cooking.

We all know that baking from scratch is about the most economical way to have breads and desserts. That was same back then as it is now. A few of the baked goods in the cookbook sounded more humble than what we've come to expect from our modern cookbooks. However, the 1939 cookbook  was serving it's depression-era reader. Carrot pie (shredded carrots in a sweetened egg custard), custard pie, sour milk cookies, raisin cookies, are perhaps not likely to show up in Bon Appétit, although I suspect those mentioned are tasty treats. There were several familiar baked goods listed, such as brownies, various fruit pies, Scottish shortbread, gingersnaps, and oatmeal cookies. 

The meat section was perhaps the most interesting, as folks a hundred years ago were accustomed to eating more variety in meat than modern consumers. There were several rabbit recipes, various fowl and game recipes, and perhaps the section most of us would prefer not to cook from -- recipes using organ meat, sweetbreads, heart, kidney, tongue and liver. Organ meats were substantially less expensive than muscle meats. During hard times, a dinner featuring tongue or heart or liver might be the only way a homemaker could put meat on her table. Aside from what was cooked, what I found surprising was how much meat recipes called for. Where the recipe yield stated 6 servings, 1 1/4 to 2 pounds of boneless meat were called for. I would have thought during the Depression the cookbook authors would have thought that perhaps less meat per serving might be what consumers at the time were most interested in. Despite this, there were familiar recipes included, such as chicken pie, beef pie, fried chicken, pot roast, meat loaf.

If I had to feed a large family, and I had a limited budget, I would focus on the soup section. Here's a sampling of soup recipes in this cookbook that sound appealing and are budget-friendly. Split Pea Soup, Chicken-Noodle Soup,  Corn Chowder, Dutch Potato Soup (has bacon in it!) or Golden Potato Soup, Vegetable Soup, Hamburger-Vegetable Chowder, Lima Bean Soup, Chicken and Rice Soup, and Okra Chowder (if I grew okra).

The other section that I would focus on to feed a large family on a budget would be the one on eggs. Eggs then and now are an economical source of protein. There's a recipe for Egg Balls that are a lot like meatballs, using hard-cooked eggs mashed and combined with bread crumbs, seasonings and a little cheese then formed into balls and deep-fried. Those sound interesting.

There's a section on making candy. As you might expect, given this book was from the Depression, many of these recipes use very basic ingredients such as sugar, corn syrup, milk, butter, honey, nuts, vinegar, and soda. In this section is a recipe for popcorn balls and candied apples. both very budget-friendly candy options using cheap (popping corn) or even free (homegrown apples) ingredients. Of course, there are other nostalgia-inducing candy recipes that likely were made around the holidays, such as sea foam, nougat, divinity, fondant, chocolate fudge, and pecan roll.

My impressions of this cookbook

Overall, the recipes seemed to only call for very ordinary (for the time) ingredients. Very few prepared products are used in these recipes. Exceptions included boxed cornflakes, graham crackers, and lady fingers used in some cookie and dessert recipes, canned tomatoes and canned tomato soup used in soup and main dish recipes, and American cheese in most recipes that call for cheese. Otherwise, this is a very cook-from-scratch cookbook. 

My other thought was that many of these recipes are suited to the home gardener/orchard keeper, forager, small game hunter, and weekend fisherman. I could find recipes for every type of fruit that we grow on our property, including new-to-us gooseberries. Many folks in the 30s scrambled for food to keep their families fed, and they made do with what they could grow, hunt, forage, or catch. 

This cookbook is a meet-you-where-you-are kind of cookbook, taking into account the necessity to use everything, even the soured milk, and to utilize humble ingredients, yet still create tasty meals and treats.

I look forward to trying some of these recipes that are completely new to me, such as the carrot pie and the egg balls. I'll tell you all about my cooking adventures in future posts.

Answer to Kris's Question: 90s Garlic Press

A little over a week ago I wrote about cleaning, mincing, and freezing lots of garlic at one time to save precious time on busy weeknights when cooking dinner. Doing this work is my best garlic hack. In the comments, Kris asked what brand garlic press I used. 

It's a Zyliss Susi from the 90s. (So on Etsy or ebay, it's called vintage.) It's heavy duty, cast aluminum, and has been a power house for us for over 30 years. Before this one, I had a flimsy stainless garlic press that got bent out of shape. When my sister asked me what I could use for my birthday one year, I said a new garlic press. She sent me this one.

Ones just like mine can be seen here, this one on Etsy or here,  this one on ebay. You can see the resale price varies quite a bit. 

If something happened to the one I have, I wouldn't hesitate to replace it with a second-hand (Etsy or ebay) garlic press just like the one I have, spending up to $20. 

As a cool add-on, in the package with the garlic press it came with this red cleaning tool. You press it into the backside of the press and push any stuck bits out. It makes cleaning the press super easy.

The drawback to this model is it's aluminum and oxidizes. Hand washing this isn't so much of a problem. But running it through the dishwasher will cause serious oxidation over time, causing pitting and corrosion, due to the alkalinity of dishwasher detergent combined with high temperatures. So we wash it by hand.

The hinge is strong, it always closes easily on the garlic clove, and most of the garlci is pressed through on one squeeze. After that first squeeze, I use a table knife to scrape any unpressed bits back into the base of the press and squeeze again. When I press a bunch of cloves at once, I just keep loading them one or two peeled cloves at a time into the chamber/basket and press away without cleaning out the press until the very end.

If you have any further questions, please ask.

No Waste Cooking: The Pan From Cooking Bacon

After frying bacon and draining off most of the bacon fat, I allow the pan to cool then place it in the fridge until an evening when I'm sautéing green vegetables.

For my birthday breakfast last week, we had some bacon with fresh fruit. I saved the bacon grease in a small dish, leaving just a little fat still in the pan, maybe a table spoon. I kept this pan, unwashed for about 2 days in the fridge, until I wanted to sauté some broccoli. I used the bacon-crusted pan to do the broccoli. It was delicious, and made use of some flavoring that might have been washed down the drain.

Our favorite vegetables for cooking in bacon-crusted pans include fresh green beans, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, and frozen corn. After the initial quick sauté of about 30 seconds, I put a lid on the pan and allow to continue cooking, softening up the bacon crust as the vegetables finish cooking. The liquid naturally in the vegetables provides the moisture needed to create steam, preventing drying out. (Green beans tend to have a lower water content and tougher fibers. Adding 3 to 4 tablespoons of water to the frying pan just before putting the lid on the pan will provide all the moisture needed to create a good steam and reduce fibrousness.) The vegetables tenderize and complete cooking quickly. A sprinkling of salt and the veggies are ready for the table.

Not only does this use every last bit from frying bacon, but the steaming of veggies makes the pan easier to clean afterward. A double win!

What are your favorite no-waste cooking tips?

Rhubarb Cup: A Delightful Springtime Dessert from the 1940s

Our rhubarb is is growing by leaps and bounds each day. And I still had a bag of chopped rhubarb in the deep freeze from last season to use. Oops! Well, no time like the present to cook that up.

The other evening I made Rhubarb Cup, which is basically individual pre-cooked rhubarb compotes topped with a sweetened biscuit, each, and baked in custard cups. I used a scone dough recipe for the sweet biscuit topping. 

I had enough rhubarb that I could have baked a pie. But I thought I'd rather do cups with biscuit topping as biscuit dough is lower in fat than pie pastry, and I could incorporate some whole wheat flour in the biscuit dough, making this dessert slightly healthier than pie.

During WW2, opting for cobblers or crisps over making pies or cakes was a great way to spare precious butter (or other rationed fats) and sugar, and still produce a tasty dessert. My grandmother was raising 3 growing children during World War 2. Sunday dinner was the one time per week dessert was served. When butter went on ration around 1943 in the US, my grandmother, and other women at the time, had to shift gears when it came to cooking. Substitutions were made in recipes, and in some instances, certain types of recipes became more popular as they naturally used less of the rationed foods than others. Cobbler and crisps were types of desserts that grew in popularity for this reason.

My grandmother made "cups" as she called them, using whatever fresh fruit she could obtain and named it according to that fruit. "Cups" were baked as individual servings in custard cups, hence the name. They moved frequently for my grandfather's work. As a result, what was available changed from year to year. When they lived where peaches were abundant in summer, my grandmother made Peach Cup. When they moved to a place where wild blueberries were free for the picking in summer and apples came to the house in bushel baskets in the fall, she made Blueberry Cup or Apple Cup. When their family returned to Utah at the end of the war, my grandmother had access to her father's large and well-tended garden, which included several rhubarb plants. Rhubarb Cup made its way to the weekly menu in spring.

When I went to make something with my frozen rhubarb, I remembered my grandmother and her fruit dessert "cups." In that moment, a Rhubarb Cup sounded so appealing. My grandmother took the time to use a biscuit cutter to make neat little circles of dough to top each serving. I took the easy way out and made wedges of dough cut from a round. They tasted delicious, and my family devoured them. I think I'll make more cup desserts this season as a way to use some of our abundant garden fruit. 

Does nostalgia prompt you to cook or bake particular dishes? Do you have a memory of something your grandmother cooked or baked that you like to make now?

The Gift of Some Gooseberries

I mentioned that my son and daughter-in-law had given me some spending money to use at a particular nursery for my birthday a year ago. I also said we finally got around to going there on my birthday this year. Well, I thought I'd show you what I bought with that money.

It's a gooseberry plant. I had read about gooseberries in a NW plant catalog some years back. Apparently, they've had their share of controversy in the plant world over the last 100 years. For a time, they were completely banned in the US, as the plant is a host to a disease affecting white pine trees. By the 1960s, it was apparent that gooseberries (and their cousins currants) don't pose an issue for disease on a large scale in most of the US. So the federal government lifted the ban and allowed states to choose whether to ban them or not. Gooseberries and currants are still banned or restricted in many parts of the East Coast of the US. However, much of the US legalized both following the lifting of the federal ban. If you haven't heard of or ever seen gooseberries, this could be part of it. 

My son and daughter-in-law told me they'd seen them in Whole Foods and some farmer's markets in summer. I find it intriguing that enough folks in my area are interested in this fruit. The fruits are not long-keepers, but will store up to 2 or 3 weeks in the fridge. They are primarily used in preserves, pies, crumbles, and fools (a creamy dessert with added fruit). They are also cooked into a sauce as an addition to meat and fish. When fully ripe, they are sweet enough to eat out of hand or added to fruit compotes. Gooseberries are about the size of a grape each. For the most part, this fruit is most popular in the UK, northern Europe, and Scandinavia.

Our day at the nursery was fun and very interesting. This is the largest complex of greenhouses that I've ever been to. Many of the greenhouses are connected to each other, yet they are all climate controlled for the needs of different plants. We visited a large tropical greenhouse with plants that favor warm and humid environments, including banana plants and orchids. We also passed through the warm and dry greenhouse and saw several varieties of cacti. There was a large heated, humidity-neutral greenhouse where I found tomato, pepper, squash and pumpkin plants. It's still a little too early to plant those out in the garden, so a warm greenhouse was appropriate for their needs right now. I also spent time in the unheated greenhouse and checked out their cool season vegetable starts. They had everything I could think of growing in those greenhouses, both edible and ornamental. 

When I casually asked an employee if they thought they might carry gooseberry bushes, I was pleasantly surprised when she said yes and directed me to the right greenhouse. Once in that greenhouse, another employee directed me to an outdoor area just to the back and showed me a selection of about 8 different gooseberry varieties. Gooseberry plants can be very thorny, so I selected a variety that is mostly thornless (it still had a couple of thorns on the stems, though). I also looked for one that was characterized as large and sweet. If you've ever picked blueberries or other similar-sized berries, you know that it's easier to pick larger fruit than tiny fruit. I don't want to create too much extra work for myself.

Anyway, I got the  gooseberry bush planted this afternoon. We're expecting a couple of days of rain, so my new plant should get watered-in well. My new little plant has blossoms forming already. With some luck, we should be able to enjoy some gooseberries this summer.

Best (purchased) gift ever -- something to help me grow food for my family.

Have you ever had gooseberries? Have you ever heard of gooseberries?

Split Plate Restaurant Meal and Tipping

So what do you do for tipping when you don't order very much, such as when sharing meals?

Yesterday for my birthday lunch, after spending several hours at Flower World, we went to a diner-style restaurant and paid cash. None of the places that I had gift cards to were even remotely nearby, and the market on property didn't have anything with which to build a lunch. I had actually heard about this diner before and thought this would be as good as any time to check it out.

Neither my husband nor I eat a lot at lunch, and neither do our daughters. In eyeing other diner's portions, it was clear we would only eat half of what what served. I know, some folks like taking leftovers home for additional meals. We don't really like to do that. I make plenty of leftovers from my own kitchen, and I don't like to pay restaurant prices for leftovers.

So my husband and I shared a sandwich meal along with a side of fruit, and my daughters shared a meal between themselves (they still needed to ask for to-go boxes, even with splitting).

I know this must be a bit of a disappointment to the server when a table doesn't order very much, hence don't spend much on which to base tipping. To our server's credit, she immediately said she'd bring extra plates. We decided to tip more generously than we otherwise would. We tipped just about 15% on what would have been the amount if we all ordered something. Although, if we'd all ordered something, we might have ordered less expensive (and smaller) meals for each of us. For us, this felt like the right thing to do. It wasn't a huge tip, but then she didn't have to do much extra work for us.

How do you handle tipping when you share a meal? Do you think patrons ought to tip based on what was actually spent, or on what might have been spent? Or do you think the tip should be somewhere in between?

By the way, the sandwich was tasty. We shared a turkey club sandwich on their diner-made bread and a fruit cup on the side. It was the right amount for my husband and myself.

I'll be back tomorrow!

Hi friends,

Today was my birthday. We had a super fun day. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Right now I'm bushed. See you then.

Can you take advantage of WIC prices even if you don't qualify for the program?

If you're not aware, WIC stands for low-income (pregnant or nursing) Women, Infants, and (young) Children. It's a federal food assistance program designed to improve nutrition specifically for this demographic. This is a different program from SNAP (food stamps). SNAP provides a dollar amount for qualifying citizens and legal residents, based on income and not gender or age. 

WIC provides e-coupons (on a registered card) to obtain specific foods in specific amounts. The foods allowed are lower cost but high in nutritional value, covering basics like fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables, milk, whole grains, breakfast cereal, peanut butter, dried beans, canned fish (tuna), tofu, and baby formula. The shopper selects the amounts of these foods allowed, receives them for free, and the store is reimbursed by the federal government. Most stores use shelf tags to indicate whether or not a food is WIC eligible.

To keep costs for this tax payer-funded program under control, state agencies use various cost containment strategies, such as limiting eligible products to specific container sizes or specific brands. For example, at WinCo today I noticed that one brand and size can of tuna was WIC eligible, while other brands and sizes were not. I compared the unit price on the price tag of the various brands and sizes, and the WIC eligible one was the least expensive per ounce. You would think that the family-size can would be less expensive per ounce than the smaller 5-oz can. But it's the reverse. From the USDA's website, the federal government encourages competitive bidding for authorized foods. While the government doesn't set the prices for each WIC eligible item, it encourages states to limit WIC eligible items to those brands/sizes that are lowest in price. This can influence pricing set by manufacturers on specific brands and sizes of each item.

Okay, so I am obviously not eligible for WIC. So how can WIC help me (or you)?

First of all, the WIC price is the same price for all consumers. There isn't a different price set for WIC recipients vs. ordinary consumers. But the price on WIC products is mostly the best value for nutrition in the above mentioned specific categories.

Some states require grocery stores to use WIC identifying labels on the shelves for eligible products. Other states don't require this, but encourage or allow stores to use state-provided tags to assist WIC shoppers find the right products. In some cases, the WIC tag is a separate shelf tag from the price tag, and in other cases the WIC information is on the shelf price tag. Sometimes it's just a capital "W" on the price tag. 

To be noted, fruits and vegetables are not restricted to size or brand, but to a fixed total dollar amount per month. However, stores may use WIC identifying labels on more common sizes of packages of fruits or vegetables or packages which represent the best value.

Once you figure out how your local stores identify WIC-approved foods, you can use this as a shortcut for finding lowest priced foods in specific categories. Our WinCo keeps the lowest priced (per unit cost) items covered by WIC on green tag (WinCo's "extra savings" products) longer than standard sales. The WIC eligible canned tuna has been on green tag for many months now. And this is the lowest price per ounce can. In the frozen foods, I noticed today that the 16-ounce package of mixed vegetables had the WIC tag, but the 32-ounce package did not. This could have been an oversight by the store, or it could have indicated that this is both the best value (price per ounce for this product) as well as most commonly purchased size. When I compared unit pricing, the 16-ounce was indeed the less expensive option. If I were a WIC shopper, I could use this info to help me get the most produce for my family for the limited dollar amount allowed. As a non-WIC shopper, I can also use this info to get the most produce for my family for my limited budget.

Basically, WIC-approved foods represent best nutritional density in their categories while at the lowest unit price. And you can find these foods easily by scanning for WIC shelf labels.

How to Put On a Frugal Birthday Celebration: 6 Tips for Birthdays on a Budget

Guess who took another lap around the sun, as of this week? Yep, that would be me. Thursday is my birthday.

Since my mother is no longer around to plan my birthdays for me, I've been making my own plans for the day. And as you know, we do birthdays frugally (shocker, I know) in our family. We all want to have a special day on our birthday, but special doesn't have to break the bank. Today I'll share with you how I plan to have a fabulously frugal birthday later this week, complete with candle on a "cake" and some fun activities.

Whether planning a celebration for my kids in their younger days or a special year for one of us as adults, I consider 6 aspects where I can choose to spend or to save: venue, menu, time of day, activities/entertainment, communication, and decorations. Here's what I've chosen for my special day.

Venue

Where we'll celebrate can be the most expensive part of a celebration or not at all expensive. We can choose to dine in a restaurant, or we can choose to eat from home (whether at home or picnic from home). This year I'm choosing to eat breakfast and dinner at home, cooked from scratch. I have a couple of giftcards that we may use for lunch. Alternatively for lunch, we may buy something to eat at the little market we'll visit.

Budget Venues: public places (parks, beaches), home, free community rooms or church social halls

Menu

Even more influential in the final cost for birthday celebrations is the food choices. Restaurant dining has become rather expensive in recent years. Groceries have also gone up in cost. Yet, scratch-cooked meals don't seem to have suffered nearly as much from inflation as restaurant meals. Despite this, there are ways to enjoy dining out that are budget-friendly. Our family chooses counter-service restaurants as opposed to table service. We also choose lunch over dinner out. We tend to eat less at lunch than we do at dinner. So if we want to eat out on a birthday, a counter service lunch will be the most budget-friendly. This is also a great time to use squirreled away gift cards. for my daughters' birthday, we used a Panera gift card at lunch time and didn't even exhaust the gift card. Of course, we ordered carefully from the budget options.

As I said above, we'll be having breakfast and lunch at home. I've requested bacon, papaya, and toast for breakfast and mushrooms burgers with sweet potato fries for dinner with strawberry shortcake for dessert. I'll be picking up the bacon, papaya, mushrooms, frozen sweet potato fries, strawberries, and canned coconut milk (to make a whipped topping I can eat) at WinCo when I do my regular shopping tomorrow. Our lunch out will either be covered by a gift card or I'll use some cash at the market we'll visit.

Budget Menus: cook from home, use gift cards that you already have, potluck

Time of day

The time of day one choose to celebrate impacts the bottom line, too, but to a lesser degree. That is unless you're planning a table service meal. Breakfast or lunch out are almost always less expensive than dinner out. And coffee out (we did a coffee date for our anniversary last year) or an ice cream cone is even more frugal. The same goes for having a celebration at home. If we were inviting guests, expectations for food and beverages would be less for an event in the middle of the afternoon compared to lunchtime or evening. When we hosted celebrations for our daughters' university graduations, we set the time in mid-afternoon, when a hearty snack might be the expectation for the guests.

Budget time of day: mid-afternoon or any time a full meal is not expected, such as morning coffee gathering or after dinner ice cream outing

Activities or entertainment

Here's where our family demonstrates our birthday frugality perhaps the most. We almost always choose free activities or entertainment for parties. When my kids were little, we set up games and activities in the house for them. One year we used a bunch of packing boxes to build a castle for the kids to play in. Another year we let the kids paint on a wall we planned on painting over anyway in a few months. We had treasure hunts, picnics in the park, used passes we had been gifted to take kids to the science museum, and watched free entertainment at the Seattle Center. As adults, we've had tea parties, cookouts, beach picnics, park picnics, watched movies on streaming or dvds, played board games, window shopped in the vintage district, and visited local greenhouses and arboretums. All of the entertainment above was basically free. 

This year's entertainment will be a trip to a place my son and daughter-in-law have visited. Last year, for my birthday gift, they gave me money to spend at this place. I am just now getting to go there. It has several greenhouses, free-roaming chickens, grounds to explore, a statuary and pottery center, plants and trees for purchase, and a market that sells locally produced/raised/harvested foods and beverages. Our lunch may come partially from this market, using my gifted spending money.

Budget activities or entertainment: free concerts and dance recitals, free days at museums, art/craft at home, outdoor games like frisbee at the park, visits to arboretums and greenhouses, boardgames, movies on streaming or dvds, music through Spotify, dvd concerts played on your TV

Communication

Do you remember as a child getting a physical invitation from a classmate to their birthday party? Perhaps you helped your mom or dad address the invitations to your own party. When my kids were young, I made invitations, using colorful paper I had at home. Today you can use free tools like Canva to design professional-looking invitations. But most of us now rely on phone calls, texts, emails, or digital invites through sites like Evite. Digital invitations are a nice hybrid of digital communications like phone or text and a decorative and creative invitation reminiscent of the paper kind. Sites like Evite offer a free tier that allows access to some of the templates and offers RSVP tracking. Of course, they try to upsell you to a subscription service or paid "Premium" option. I do think physical invitations are still the norm for weddings, though. For my own birthday, a phone call is sufficient for those outside of our household.

Budget Communications: homemade physical invites free-hand or using Canva, digital invites such as through Evites, personal communication

Decorations

For the most part, if we're at home, we use what we have. We light candles or put up string lights. If serving a meal, we use our dining room, tablecloths, nice dishes etc. When my kids were little, we "decorated" with balloons, homemade banners and that was it. As adults, if the birthday person is female and are gifted flowers, then those flowers become the table decoration. While one could purchase themed decorations from Party City and other party retailers, our family prefers to either use what we have in the house already, or home-make something, such as a photo wall or birthday banner. For my birthday decorations, we'll use candles and perhaps flowers on the table.

Budget Decorations: use what have at home, such as candles, string lights, photographs or digital slide shows, make banners, centerpieces using flowers from your garden or your own nature collections

Best Garlic Hack: Mince and Freeze in Batches for Easy Weeknight Meals

I have days where creating a full family meal from scratch sounds daunting. I may have been busy in the garden, or doing taxes, or embarking on spring cleaning, and then the dinner hour begins to approach and I know I need to get busy in the kitchen.

There are a couple of specific kitchen tasks that I just don't like doing in the moment. Dealing with our garden garlic is one of those. I have to clean the cloves, peel them, and then chop. It's just a tedious chore I don't enjoy. Evidently, the rest of my family doesn't particularly enoy this task when they're cooking, either. As a result, I found myself buying garlic powder often this past winter. And yet, we have oodles of garden garlic remaining from last season.

So today I set out to prep several heads of garlic to make all of our cooking just a teensy bit easier. In addition to saving effort on a daily basis, I save a little money, too. I've often wanted to buy minced garlic in a jar. A 4.5 oz jar sells for about $2 at Walmart. That much home-grown garlic costs under 10 cents in water during the growing season. (I replant cloves saved from the previous harvest, so no cost for the "seed" garlic.) Save effort, save money. And by doing a large batch at once, I save a little time per clove.

On Monday I checked the garlic stored in the fridge and saw we still had a lot to go through before the next harvest. It was time to do something and get us to use this in the coming months.

I just grabbed a handful of heads of garlic, about enough for 3 weeks of meals in our house.

After pulling all of the cloves off each head, I rubbed them between my hands to loosen the papery skins.

It took me about 20 to 30 minutes to peel all of the cloves.

Once done, I filled almost a half pint jar with peeled cloves. I had a thought to just leave the cloves whole, but peeled in the jar. But I've had peeled cloves of garlic go soft within a few weeks. So I put all of the cloves through the garlic press.

Once all minced I had about a half-cup of ready to use garlic.

To maintain its fresh flavor, minced garlic can store in the freezer for several months. So I scooped all of the garlic into a small bag, pressed it flat, and lightly scored the slab.  Popping the bag into the freezer, I made sure it froze flat. Having the garlic mass flat and lightly scored just makes its easier to break off meal-sized pieces. Unlike jarred garlic, with freezing minced garlic, there is no need to add anything for preservation.

I now have a slight head start when cooking meals from scratch, and I'm pretty sure we'll go through all of our garden garlic in time. I'll need to do this in additional batches as we finish off what I have frozen. But I'd rather do a large batch every few weeks than deal with individual garlic cloves on a daily basis.

Is there any ingredient that you like to prep in advance in large batches? Have you ever made your own convenience products? In the 80s and 90s making Bisquick-style baking mixes was popular. I tried that a few times. It worked well. i just don't use Bisquick often enough to make a home version. I do make cake mixes occasionally. Not that we eat a lot of cake, but homemade cake mixes last 6 to 12 months when stored properly. A 3-cake batch of cake mix is easy enough for us to go through in a year, with birthdays and all.