Edamame Ginger Bean Salad

I've mentioned once before that I love bean salads. I wasn't even kidding. Today I made a killer bean salad for lunch!

Ingredients:

Edamame

Cucumber

Red Onion

Purple Cabbage

Ground Ginger

Olive Oil

Salt, Pepper

Since the salad was purple and green Chris and I made a whole pretend menu for a purple and green lunch. The asian edamame ginger bean salad. California sushi rolls and the crab salad has a little purple dye in it. Green tea ice cream with lavender. Purple and green grapes, frozen (Chris' Idea).

Do you ever plan meals around colors? Chris says that purple and green foods seem healthy to him, do certain colors in foods make you think the food is going to be better or worse?

Treats...

Have you ever used food as a gift?

maybe you gave Christmas cookies away to your neighbors or made soup for a family member who was sick.

I love making food for other people. Chris is a great sport about eating all of my food but it's nice to have an objective audience. I'm pretty sure Chris is telling me the truth about my food but you never know...

I'm in a bible study once a week and I like to bring them treats. One time it was Berger cookies, which are my favorite cookie in the whole world. One time it was pumpkin scones. Tonight I made little apple turnovers.

Something about September says "cook with apples!" So I did. I didn't measure nor did I use a recipie but here is what I did.

1. Dice apples very fine.

2. Simmer sugar and water on the stove.

3. Coat apples in cinnamon, a little salt, a little sage, and a smidgen pumpkin spice.

4. Add apples to simmering sugar water.

5. Boil until thick. Stirring some.

6. Defrost frozen pastry puff.

7. Make small squares, making sure to make an extra one for the husband.

8. Add a dollop of apple filling and press into a little triangle.

9. Brush the top with an egg wash; 1 egg and a bit of water.

10. Bake 350 degrees until brown and golden looking.

Go have fun making other people happy with food!

Vegetable Soup

Chris and I made vegetable soup for dinner.

It was delicious. but I am the biggest fan of soup! If I could find a t-shirt that said I (heart) soup, I'd buy it.

Easy Recipe!

1. Roast veggies.

Potato, Green Beans, Mushrooms, Carrot chopped into a large dice and coated in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, sage, white pepper, or whatever spices you like. I make the spice oil rub and then add the veggies. Spread them out on a sheet tray and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for maybe 20 minutes.

2. Start soup.

Onion, Carrot, and Celery chopped into a fine dice. Saute in a little olive oil. Add some stock, I used chicken because I had it but vegetable would work great and would keep the recipe vegetarian. Add a can of diced tomatoes too.

3. Combine.

Mix roasted veggies with soup base. It's nice to have a helper since the veggies are hot.

4. Simmer a while.

5. While simmering I made some crusty bread strips.

I used the Genesis 1:29 bread. then the secret ingredient... Papa John's garlic dipping sauce! I spread it over the bread and bake for 15 min at 300 degrees. The dipping sauce is processed and terrible but SO easy, plus we had 4 of them hanging around the refrigerator.

6. We had two servings of leftover meatloaf (more detailed blog to come) so I crumbled them up and added them to our bowls and poured the soup over them. They were really good in the soup but I mostly used them because otherwise they would have been thrown away.

Here are my calorie approximations.

Happy Eating!

Planning Saves Money

I plan out all the meals here at the Howe house. Meal planning was one of the first things that I did to get into coupons and saving money in general. I noticed we were throwing away leftovers and running to the grocery store for miscellaneous things almost every night.

I look at our social calender and work schedules to see what nights we will be able to eat together and then try to make sure I can use the leftovers from an early day in a meal later in the week. It is easy to have leftovers when you're only cooking for two. If you're cooking for a larger family you might need to plan to cook extra. It seems like a lot of work up front but it's soooo great to know that I have every ingredient for dinner and when Chris says, "What's for dinner?" I don't have to groan.

We made shrimp tacos with citrus slaw yesterday for labor day, seriously one of my favorite recipes. Check it out, it's so easy and delicious. Plus I don't measure any of it! I served it with watermelon which was only $4.49 for a half seedless watermelon at Freshfields Farm, compared to $3.45 at Publix for a quarter seedless watermelon.

We had some slaw leftover and no shrimp, but we had 1 small grilled chicken breast leftover from "Dinner Chris Style" so I had grilled chicken tacos with citrus slaw for lunch and nothing got thrown away.

If you're going to worry about getting the best price, don't throw away food! Make sure you can use all of something before you purchase it. The only downfall is that we have a tendency to have themed weeks. I use broccoli 3 times during the week to make sure we eat all of it. It's broccoli week! Maybe if you have kids you could use it as a learning opportunity. During dinner you could talk about all the cool things broccoli does for your body (or maybe I'm nerdy).

There are a TON of websites out there to help you with meal planning. I can't really recommend any of them because I don't use one. Do you use on that is great? Please share if you have one, I found this super cute visual aid to help you remember to have balanced meals.

Chris Style

I normally work on the weekends while Chris works during the week. This means Sunday is normally our only whole day together. That also means we normally spend the day being together and don't really accomplish anything. Since today is Labor day and we are both off of work yesterday became a day to be productive and today became lazy day.

Yesterday was a crazy Sunday of errands and chores. So last night we made dinner, Chris style.

I've told you Chris loves all his foot cut up into bit size pieces and served all together in a bowl, so that's what we did. and we even ate it on the couch instead of at the table!

We made Kraft macaroni and cheese from the infamous blue box. I added a little extra cheese, sour cream, and milk. Then, in the same pot, we added steamed broccoli and grilled chicken. It was easy, balanced, and actually pretty good! I did add a few green onions and mushrooms for some extra flavor.

I don't know what it is about the bowl that makes it so comforting but the same meal, separated, on a plate doesn't give him the same level of satisfaction.

What do you eat after a hard day? Do you have a method of cooking that makes you sit back on the couch and go "ahhhh"?

More Discounts...

Today at Publix I had my very first opportunity to fight for my discount! Seriously, I punched a girl! ok, no I didn't. But I went to customer service at least.

If you know me, then you know a little arguing never scared me. I don't particularly like fighting or confrontation, but if I'm right and it's nothing personal (like a price) then, bring it on!

The advertisement said General Mills cereals were BOGO. I had 2 coupons for 2 different General Mills cereals that gave me $1 off one box. Math time: $4.29/box is $8.58 total. Minus $2 in coupons and minus $4.29 for my free box = $2.29. Divide by my two boxes and it was $1.15 a box! Oh man, saving money never gets old!

BUT... when I looked at my receipt on the way out I noticed I did not get my $4.29 deducted for the free box. It simply wouldn't do after the delicious coupon to sale matching I did.

The customer service gentleman had a small boy (How young does Publix employ people because he genuinely looked 8) run to the cereal isle and check my already flawless reading of the fine print. Then we had to grab a lady to check the advertisement. Turns out... I was right! $4.29 in my hand cash.

Happy Coupon Clipping!

Las Vegas

Food in Las Vegas is separated into two categories: expensive casual (think $11 hamburgers) and expensive luxury ($45 steaks). The idea of the $2.99 buffet may look nice in movies when the main character has lost all his money gambling, but the buffet we went too was $29.99.

The last time we were in Vegas we had the ultimate pleasure of eating at Hubert Keller's Fleur de Lys. We would LOVE to do that again but we were on a special wedding package and couldn't possibly justify a $400 meal.

Rick Moonen's RM Seafood has a "downstairs" that is a little less formal. For lunch we could get in and out for $50. This is probably my forerunner, I really liked Rick Moonen on Top Chef and I'd love to try his restaurant. His restaurant's mission statement includes; "At Rm Seafood, we are committed to use organically grown, sustainable produce and sustainably caught seafood." Sounds fabulous and responsible.

I definitely need a new dress, or two, for the trip. Victoria's secret's dresses are totally vegas appropriate and don't cost more than my plane ticket! I like this one. Anything goes in Vegas fashion but I don't know if I can do anything too flashy...

We are staying at the Wyndham Grand Desert. It's just off the strip. Last time we stayed right on the strip which I liked but this has a much more resort feel to it and their website says they have a free shuttle to the strip, so bonus!

Has anyone out there been to Vegas a bunch of times and have some advice for us? Any great restaurants we should find?

Potatoes

Potatoes are kind of like a super-food. They say blueberries are a super-fruit so maybe we could get the word out about potatoes.

There are many awesome things about them.

1. they are gluten free

2. they can be boiled, baked, steamed or sauteed

3. they can be mashed to a pulp or served whole

4. they can be put into soup

5. they can be the base for delicious things like chili or broccoli or cheese

6. they are 100% natural

7. they are inexpensive ( $.89/lb this week)

8. they come in red, purple, brown, and yellow

9. they grow in the ground!

10. they make delicious chips

There are probably more cool things about potatoes but that's plenty for me.

Mashed potatoes are probably my favorite food. I think I have said that about other foods so I'll clarify and say my favorite starchy vegetable.

Mashed potatoes are a crazy thing because when I say that we are all probably thinking of totally different things. Creamy or chunky? red or brown potatoes? skin on or skin off? milk?butter?

The options are close to endless.

I like to add some mashed cooked cauliflower to my potatoes. (cooked is key, don't forget that step or your potatoes will be inedible. I forgot that step once)

Today I was chatting with a good cook friend of mine and he said he adds a little cream cheese to his mashed potatoes for texture.

What do you add to your mashed potatoes?

Tip: If you like skin off mashed potatoes, boil the whole potatoes for a few minutes and then remove the skin under cool tap water. The skins peel right off without the waste of using a peeler on raw potatoes. Then you can chop them and add them back to the water to finish cooking.

CAKE!

I never liked sweets.

We didn't even have cake at our wedding because, I didn't like cake. I always preferred salty foods like popcorn, chips, nacho cheese, even pretzels.

Well I don't know why, but for some reason after getting married I decided I love sweets!

and I LOVE CAKE.

I told you Ina Garten was one of my favorite chefs, well I have been craving this cake she makes called Beatty's Chocolate Cake.

and... Chris, very kindly, pointed out that buying cake by the slice every night is costing us too much. He thought I should make the cake and then it wouldn't have high fructose corn syrup in it (Publix's cake sadly does have HFCS) and it would be cheaper than spending $3 a night on cake. He's smart.

I don't know about cursing on the blog but goodness! this cake was good. I'm not going to copy the recipe down because you can just click the link. It's the softest, most chocolaty, bestest cake ever!

and we even made the buttercream icing which I had never done before

but most definitly am going to start doing on a regular basis because it was like heaven; imagine soft fluffy butter that has melted chocolate, powdered sugar, vanilla, and starbucks via. very wonderful.

Thank you Chris

Chris is an amazing husband.

really stellar.

but I need to take a minute and tell all of you readers that without Chris I would never cook anything. seriously.

Chris washes every bowl, dish, and gadget I use while I cook. He washes them every night and never asks why I needed 12 bowls to make rice. He never asks why the sink is covered in melted chocolate. He lets me cook and washes my dishes. Without him I wouldn't cook because I hate washing dishes and I would never want to dirty any. I wouldn't be inspired and I wouldn't have the freedom I have to mess up our entire kitchen.

Thanks Chris. I love you.