A Zillion Meals

I have been making lots of fun meals as of the last two or three months, but I just don't seem to have had the time to post them. So I'll do a quick run down of things I've tried with links to the recipes, and then tell you about my new adventure with the food plan I started tonight!

About a month and a half ago we bought a Blendtec - Classic Series (blendtec.com) - a fancy blender that competes with the Vitamix (vitamix.com), but is less expensive with only minor differences. ($330 at Costco; Occasionally on sale for $300. Amazon and other sellers sell it for between $400 and $550, fyi.) It came with a fancy recipe book and it helped us learn how much liquid to fruit/veggie to frozen ratio to put in the jar in order to make the perfect smoothie/ whole juice/ milkshake, etc. My husband has a heavy-on-veggie smoothie every morning for breakfast. I have a milkshake about every 3rd day, and we share a icey fruit smoothie every other evening. It's great! We've also noticed our digestion systems have been performing much better than before. :-D

So, because of having this blender, we were going through fruits and veggies quadruple-y faster than before. So we started ordering produce from a co-op called Bountiful Baskets (bountifulbaskets.org). It costs less getting fruits and veggies from there than it would if I bought the same amount of stuff from the store. However, we won't know what's in the basket till we pick it up on saturday morning. However, that hasn't been a big deal for us, because we'll eat and enjoy most anything, and we're familiar enough with the blender, we don't need to work too hard to follow the 'official' recipes.

Next, we've gotten quite a few things in the Bountiful Basket that I've never used, purchased and sometimes even seen before. So each week I get on Allrecipes.com and find a recipe with good ratings that uses that unusual ingredient. Here's a list of our most recent adventures:

Chilean Milkshake
http://www.lafujimama.com/2013/06/chilean-banana-milkshake/
I had this growing up, but not in recent years until I ran across this blog. I got 80% through making it before I realized it was just a double recipe of the one I made as a kid. My only suggestion is occasionally using blueberries instead of vanilla. It's Incredible!!!

Napa Cabbage Salad 
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/napa-cabbage-salad/detail.aspx
I got a huge Napa Cabbage in our Bountiful Basket, we barely managed to fit it in the fridge... Allrecipes seemed to have 30 versions of this, so apparently there's only one mainstream way to use a Napa Cabbage. I liked this recipe, but I probably won't go buy Napa Cabbages every month.

Key Lime Cookies
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/key-lime-cookies-ii/detail.aspx
These cookies were great! Only thing I'd do different is put it in a better storage container - I kept accidentally leaving the lid off on my rubbermaid, and the cookies dried out and got crunchy too fast. Oops. I'm also only so so on having lime peel in them.

Tostones (Fried Plantains)
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/tostones-fried-plantains/detail.aspx
I always thought plantains were some sort of weird huge banana and when I found this recipe, I was convinced it'd be a dessert. However, think "banana flavored potato."It was good. It's often served with rice and beans (actually a Winco bulk recipe of beans - I'll get to that later), and that's what we made with it.

Lettuce and Tarragon Soup
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/lettuce-and-tarragon-soup/detail.aspx
Great for using up lots of lettuce - we had a gazillion heads of it with Bountiful Baskets coming every Saturday. Not as wonderful as leftovers, though.

Plum Flummery
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/plum-flummery/detail.aspx
LOVE THIS! Kind of like Jello meets Pudding. We've made this twice in 3 weeks with the plums that come with Bountiful Baskets. I generally don't like plums, but in this, Love it.

Beets and Greens
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beets-and-greens/detail.aspx
I'd never purchased beets before, and had only had a bite or so here or there, enough to know that 'I think I like it...' Great recipe and I'd definitely make it again. Less desireable as leftovers, however.

Perfect Mashed Potatoes
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chef-johns-perfect-mashed-potatoes/detail.aspx
I love this recipe - I'm getting pretty sick of "easy and fake mashed potatoes", however, my husband would prefer a creamer version than this - so add more butter and milk!

Sauteed Garlic Asparagus
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sauteed-garlic-asparagus/detail.aspx
Great way to use asparagus and enjoy it. Delicious. Also, check out this blog to discover better ways to store your asparagus in the fridge!
http://www.alwaysorderdessert.com/2011/05/how-to-store-asparagus.html#.Uei-7GR4bpU

Now for tonights Dinner adventures:
Yesterday upon listening to Dave Ramsey's on KNRS, he mentioned a company called eMeals.com - you pick a meal style - classic, vegetarian, low carb, low fat, natural & organic, gluten free, etc and they send you a weekly meal plan (You can sign up for dinners only or do 2 or 3 meals a day with food plans. Groupon.com occasionally runs deals with them). They also compile a weekly grocery list, you check off what you already have and go to the store, buying only 2 lemons, 1 large tomato, etc, so that you aren't buying more than you can use or eat in a week or so of time. Less waste.

I went shopping to day with that list, and it took me less time to shop than usual, but more than I expected, simply because I didn't know where everything was or what everything was. However, I'm sure I'll get faster as I learn. The hardest ingredient to find was Farro, which I did not succeed in finding. I called about 4 health food stores after leaving Winco (who didn't carry it,) to see if they carried it. All said 'No' but one said they were looking for a supplier for it. I ended up buying Spelt as a substitute (found at Good Earth Natural Foods). There were several substitutes that were recommended on various websites including Bulgar, Barley, and Brown Rice.

I would like to mention that for one week of dinners with eMeals, my checkout cost (plus the spelt), rounded up to the nearest dollar was $55. (actually that's 6 days not 7; I skipped one meal because I am not a fan of Scallops.) If there are 4.5 weeks in a month, that's $248 for dinners. And I'd like to mention I bought 4 TYPES OF MEAT (6 chicken breasts, 1/2 lb pork loin, 1 lb. 2 (4oz) Salmon fillet, and 1 lb. flank steak). I usually only buy one type per week, and we go a little heavier on veggies - that is, when I remember to cook dinner. Sometimes we end up eating chips and snacks.

What I'm trying to say is that between January and June of this year, my grocery budget has wavered between $230 and $500 - with a median close to $370. Using eMeals to help me plan and cook, I'm predicting, it will make my budget a lot more regular, and cost less on average. But we're not having "beans and rice, rice and beans" either. On my way out of Winco, I'm often tempted to grab a chocolate bar or treat of some kind, but this time I wasn't. Why? Because I am getting spoiled with steak! Who wants crappy candy when you're getting a gourmet meal?

So today's recipe was Creole Pork Chops and homemade Creamed Corn. I'm never going to back to canned creamed corn again!!! Homemade was like sweet candy in my mouth and I didn't add sugar! Just husked corn, butter, chicken stock, salt and pepper. Wowzers.

I'd post the recipe here, but eMeals.com threatens to kick me off their site if I play in that water (legally, recipes cannot be copyrighted, but they could probably still throw a fit about me sharing stuff - "meal plans" whatever that means, and I probably wouldn't go through the hassle of running it through court, so I'll just say it's on eMeals in the "Clean Eating" Meal plan section). I'm not sure how that differs from other meal plans, but we kept switching plans until we realized there were limits to it... Can't switch again until August 16th. Oh well. A picture will have to do.

Almost lastly, upon perusing the bulk section at Winco (wincofoods.com/recipes/), I discovered that there were items there that looked fun to try and many of them had recipes to go with them... sitting right next to them. I've tried a couple of them... and they're on the website (theoretically), but it's not easy to search without a bin number, so I may have to go find those before posting. I considered doing that now, but it's almost midnight, so I'm going to end this rather long food post.

Oh, oh, one more thing... I've been visiting an Asian food store - it's within walking distance of my house - I either bring a recipe with me or have the person working there help me pick one... then they walk me through the store and get the ingredients for one meal. I've done yellow curry and vietnamese spring rolls so far. It's very exciting learning asian cooking and realizing it's not as hard as it looks!

Note: An alternative to eMeals, for if you would rather specifically pick the meals you want to eat each night, I suggest looking at Allrecipes.com pro version. They do basically the same thing as eMeals, but you pick your meal plan and it costs less per month for the membership. Don't worry about trying to pick recipes with similar ingredients because your only buying exactly what you need for each recipe, so it likely won't save you any money. But perhaps, after you've done it for a couple or few weeks, you might pick recipes where some of the ingredients are in their peak harvesting time - they'll be on sale and taste better.


Great Cooking!