Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Hot Week

Most of summer, we're a pleasant 75 to 80 degrees F in my area. However, we seem to get one or two hot spells that last anywhere from 3 days to a week, where it's right around 90 or even hotter. We get through those hot spells without AC, just a couple of fans. Anyway, this week was the hot week. I did what I could to avoid heating the kitchen. I used the microwave a lot, grilled, and used the crockpot. I also served a cold dinner one night. I did need to bake bread. However, I got the dough started very early in the morning, so it could bake before noon. And when we wanted brownies, I made my microwave brownies, using basic ingredients (cocoa powder, flour, sugar, eggs, butter, salt, vanilla). These are really quite good, very chocolatey and on the fudgy side.

Here's what we had for our evening meals this past week:

Friday
homemade pepperoni and sausage pizza, sautéed kale/garlic scapes/chive blossoms, dolmathes, canned peach slices (dented can -- 69 cents) and fresh raspberries for dessert

Saturday
refried beans, homemade tortillas, sautéed kale mixed with canned tomatoes, cherry and rhubarb pie

Sunday

Swiss chard frittata, kale/cranberry/almond salad, brown rice, leftover cherry and rhubarb pie

Monday
tuna salad on garden greens, steamed broccoli, toast, rhubarb sauce

Tuesday
teriyaki chicken and cauliflower, brown rice, frozen peas, garden raspberries

Wednesday (After dinner, the chicken leg quarter bones, skin, and leftover meat went into the crockpot for the night, to be used in Thursday's dinner.)

grilled chicken, crockpot polenta, garden salad, sautéed garden kale, garden blueberries and raspberries, microwave brownies

Thursday (My daughter was making dinner and had planned to make a chicken pot pie. To run the oven for less time, she made a quick chicken soup on the stove and baked the pie dough as crackers)

chicken and vegetable soup (chicken and stock from Wednesday's grilled chicken bones, canned carrots, frozen peas), cinnamon rhubarb sauce, homemade crackers (made with pie dough), last of the microwave brownies

That's what was on my menu. What were the highlights of yours?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Wartime No-Soil Windowsill Gardening

Back to the government-produced films from World War 2 about food and nutrition that I watched over the weekend . . .

Mrs. T. and family, breakfast which includes a dish of homegrown cress

I saw this in a couple of different films produced by the Ministry of Food in the British government. They recommended families grow cress in shallow dishes or plates on their kitchen windowsills in their homes and flats. I assume they were referring to garden cress and not watercress, as that was the only type of cress I could find info on for indoor growing without soil, as it appeared was done for these films. Here's one short film that momentarily mentions growing cress.

Mrs. T. and Her Cabbage Patch

Cress (both garden and water) are good sources of vitamin C, providing about 39% of an adults daily requirement (per healthline.com) of vitamin C in 1 cup of cress. As England's shipping was cut off from many of their food imports during the war, traditional vitamin C rich foods (citrus, especially) were unavailable on a regular basis. Anytime fruits like oranges could be gotten in Britain, they were restricted to use for children. Growing ones own cress at home, even when you didn't have a garden, gave families a source of vitamin C on a daily basis.

For today's household, I see two issues for growing cress on the windowsill: 1) inexpensive sources for a large quantity of cress seeds, and 2) cress is a cruciferous vegetable (cabbage family) which are associated with goitrogens, which for folks with thyroid issues, might be advised against consumption of this vegetable in its raw state. In regards to issue 1 (seed availability), at the bottom of the health line article, the author suggests watercress as an alternative to garden cress as a source of vitamin C. Watercress, however, is also a goitrogen. To note, cooking and fermenting cress or other cruciferous vegetables deactivates goitrogens. (Functional Nutrition Answers.com)

If you happen to have a source of either watercress or garden cress seeds, you can grow the cress on plates lined with damp paper toweling. Here's an article with instructions for growing cress indoors on a paper towel.

finished lentil sprouts, stored in a tea towel-lined plastic container in the fridge

For those of us without an ample and cheap supply of watercress or garden cress seeds for indoor growing, here's a budget-wise alternative for indoor growing, lentil sprouts. Lentil sprouts are not as high in vitamin C, with 14% of an adults daily requirement in 1 cup of sprouts. The awesome thing about growing lentil sprouts, though, is ordinary, grocery store bagged dry lentils can be used as the "seeds". If you're interested in trying to grow these sprouts, I detail how I do these in this post.

slaw type salad with lentil sprouts

How do I use the lentil sprouts? I add them to salads. I add them to sandwiches as I would lettuce of other fresh vegetable. I make a slaw type salad with them, using a mayo, vinegar, sugar, and salt dressing. 

lentil sprouts marinated for a couple of hours in bread and butter pickles juice leftover when a jar of pickles was finished

And I marinate them in leftover sweet pickle juice to eat as is -- make a great afternoon snack for me.

Anyway, I think the idea to grow cress on the windowsill was for even city dwellers to produce some of their own nutrient-dense, fresh food to ease the tight supplies across the country during the war.