Do you know the Muffin Man?

Saturday was a baking day for me. I made Best Ever Muffins. (That's the title.) I got the recipe from my hometown church's cookbook. Shout to Holy Family Catholic Church in Emmetsburg! The recipe is fairly simple. I had been wanting to make muffins for quite awhile so we'd have something different to eat in the morning. Lately my breakfast has consisted of a mandarin orange and string cheese. While that's nutritious, it gets a little boring. Muffins are usually healthy and quick. These muffins were ridiculously easy to make:

Best Ever Muffins (courtesy of Diana Parisi)

1 3/4 C flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 C sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1 well beaten egg

3/4 C milk

1/3 C oil or applesauce (I used oil because I didn't have a

pplesauce.)

Sift dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat egg; add milk. Pour

this mixture into bowl of dry ingredients. Stir quickly only until dry ingredients are moistened. DO NOT overmix. Bake at 400 degree preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. May add chocolate chips, fruit, etc. For variations, about 1/2 to 3/4 C each.

Easy, right? I used my Kitchen Aid mixer to sift the dry ingredients together. I also added blueberry craisins after mixing the dry and wet ingredients together. This recipe literally came together within 10 minutes and the best part is: it's delicious! It made about a dozen muffins, which for us is perfect. We each had one yesterday. I kept out two for tomorrow's breakfast and put the rest in the freezer. The crust is crunchy but the inside is very fluffy and light. And the blueberry craisins were a nice addition. Side note: I bought craisins, cherry craisins and blueberry craisins all for this recipe. I was that sure it would be good.

I also made bread with my bread maker.

I had planned to make whole wheat bread using the recipe from the bread maker's manual. No one tell my mom I didn't use her recipe. I will eventually but I'm still learning. And no one tell her that I bought bread flour by mistake. Friday I was standing in the baking aisle looking for whole wheat flour. I wanted the Gold Medal brand because I've used it before and it's usually not expensive. I saw Gold Medal all purpose flour and better for bread flour. There was another brand of whole wheat flour but it was over a dollar more than the Gold Medal flour. I didn't want to pay a lot for the flour. I checked the ingredients on the Better for Bread flour and it says: Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin (A B Vitamin), Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid (A B Vitamin). I saw wheat flour and my brain stopped right there. I thought Gold Medal had changed the title of their whole wheat flour because there wasn't any on the shelf. I didn't figure out that I bought the wrong flour until yesterday. But I do plan on making bread quite a bit so the flour will still be used. On the side of the flour, it says that it can be used cup for cup for whole wheat and all purpose flour in recipes so I went ahead with the whole wheat recipe. And you know what? The bread still tastes good. It doesn't take like whole wheat bread; it doesn't take like white bread. But it's good. It's a little darker than your average white bread because it contains molasses.

I also wanted to make granola. My older sister sent me the recipe and it looks good. But I forgot about it. I might make it this afternoon or I might save it for next weekend.

Shaking Up The Menu

I'm changing how I do my menu plan. It's a small change but one that I think will provide us with better nutrition. Each week, I'm going to try to have 2 chicken meals, 2 beef meals and 1 vegetarian meal. The other 2 meals can be whatever we want. I had noticed that if our menu was heavy on chicken or beef we would get bored half-way through the week and not eat it. Steve and I sat down yesterday with some cookbooks and wrote down meal ideas. Coming up with 16 meals is not easy and I had been slacking on the grocery list part when I was making the menu by myself. (Steve would be at work while I making the menu and grocery list.) I'm hoping that by bringing Steve back into the mix, I'll get a more accurate grocery list. Our list of meals so far is this:

Beef Meals:

enchiladas

tostada casserole

meatballs

Runza casserole

Chicken Meals:

crockpot buffalo chicken sandwiches

chicken pasta alfredo (I forgot to buy alfredo sauce for this week!)

Vegetarian Meals:

baked apple French toast

Other Meals:

biscuits and gravy

dumplings

left-overs x2

sub sandwiches

hot dogs

I need 2 more chicken meals and 1 more vegetarian meal. I also need to find recipes for the biscuits and gravy and the dumplings. We're not going grocery shopping until Friday or Saturday so we have plenty of time to figure it out. We also started a list of sides we'd like to include on the menu:

glazed carrots

fried broccoli

pudding

fries

I'm also trying to eat more fruits and vegetables. It's easier said than done but I'm hoping that by writing it here, I'll have more motivation to actually do it.

My birthday present

My birthday was this past Sunday. I had a great day of relaxing. Steve took me out for lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. He had been hinting about my birthday present for awhile. He ordered it online at Target.com but it wasn't supposed to arrive until the 12th. It actually arrived on the 11th but the office for our apartment complex was closed when I got home and Steve was at work. I did get to open it yesterday. He got me a bread maker! I had been wanting one for awhile and figured I would buy one at a thrift store or a garage sale. I am so excited! My sister had given me a mix for Gluten Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread which will be the first type of bread I make with the machine. The mix has bread maker instructions on the back so I'm confident it will turn out.

Menu Re-cap

A couple weeks ago, I posted my menu. It was the menu for right after Christmas. As usual, we didn't eat everything on the menu but we had a good reason. An epic flu hit my grandma's house and we ended up staying a day longer than planned. (I couldn't ride in a car the day we were supposed to go back.) The items that we did not eat were: Crockpot Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti, Boneless Beef Ribs, Vegetarian Chili and Chicken Noodle soup. Some of these made their way onto our current menu; others did not. The Crockpot cheesy chicken spaghetti did not make its way onto our current menu. Our previous menu was my second attempt for it. We've had it in the past and it tastes good but if something is on two menus in a row and we don't eat it, I figure we don't really want it and move on. The beef ribs was a lack of planning on my part. I didn't have a recipe and thought I'd figure it out when the time came... I didn't and I was still feeling a little weak from the epic flu. I'm not sure why we didn't have the vegetarian chili but I put it back on the menu. Chicken Noodle soup was another instance of not planning ahead. I hadn't taken the chicken out of the freezer before Friday. We're supposed to have it today but once again, the chicken is still in the freezer. It will get made at some point this week.

We did have the ham and the ham soup. I didn't care for the soup. It's alright but not great so I threw away the recipe. I don't keep recipes that we're not crazy about. It took 11 hours in the Crockpot. And no, I'm not kidding, 11 hours. It ended up being more mush than soup. I did add more chicken broth to our left-overs but it was still weird when I took it to work for lunch.

A couple of things that went well were: ground beef with rice and Rotel tomatoes and the hodgepodge sloppy Joes. The ground beef with rice and Rotel tomatoes was so easy. Cook rice, brown ground beef and drain, open two cans of tomatoes (with green chilis) and there you go. It made me want to prep all of our veggies for the current menu plan in advance. I haven't done it yet but am going to. This will make it easier to make supper when I'm dead-tired from work. (Something that's happening more often.) The hodgepodge sloppy Joes were the best I've ever had. I found the recipe on myfrugalfunlife.com and it is a Crockpot recipe.

In hind sight, the Crockpot was used three times which is still great. Steve did help cook through out the week which is great. I'm hoping we stick to our current menu plan a little better than we did our previous one.

Two-week Menu Plan

Steve and I have been making menu plans for over a year now. There are many reasons we do this:

1. to save money
2. we always have ingredients on hand
3. we don't have to think about what we're having for supper

Before we started making our menus, we realized that we were eating out a lot at the beginning of our marriage. This may not sound bad to some people but we had a very limited budget. I was working full-time. Steve was working part-time while looking for full-time work. We realized we couldn't continue to eat out. We were eating out for a variety of reasons:

1. We were too tired to think of what to cook for supper.
2. If we did think of something, we didn't have the ingredients on hand to make the dish and didn't want to go to the grocery store.

I had read online about making a menu plan and decided to give it a shot. We made a menu plan for one week. I didn't pay attention to the Fareway ad and just wrote down what we wanted to eat and made our grocery list from that. After spending $80 a week on groceries for awhile, I decided that was ridiculous. I think that's when I started the two-week menu plan. I would glance at the Fareway ad but not base my meals around it. It was still cheaper than our weekly grocery list and I started incorporating left-overs and using all (ok, most) of the produce I was buying. Sometime during my menu-planning adventures, I decided to make a menu plan for a month. We would write down 36 meals and then write our grocery list. We would buy all non-perishables and the first two weeks' perishables. The third week we would buy the last two weeks' perishables. This sounds great in theory and as I'm writing this, I'm thinking We should do that again. But I remember why we stopped doing it. It is very hard to sit down and decide what we're going to eat for the next month. It takes a good hour to make the menu plan and then it takes about an hour (more or less) to make the grocery list. It did save time in the long run but we decided to switch back to our two-week menu plan. I've finished writing our menu plan for the next two weeks. I'm pretty excited because it re-uses a lot of ingredients and I'm using my crock-pot at least 5 times. Without further ado, here is my menu plan:

Sunday Dec. 26th

gone

Monday Dec. 27th

grilled cheese, tomato soup

Tuesday Dec 28th Crockpot Day

Crockpot Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti, fruit and veggies

Wednesday Dec. 29th

boneless beef ribs, fruit and veggies

Thursday Dec. 30th Crockpot Day

Ham, Knorr rice side, veggies and fruit

Friday Dec. 31st

Shredded meat sandwiches, veggies and fruit

Saturday Jan. 1st Crockpot Day

Ham and Lentil Soup, veggies and fruit

Sunday Jan. 2nd

Orange Chicken, rice

Hot Ham and Cheese Sandwiches, veggies, fruit

Monday Jan. 3rd Crockpot Day

Three Bean Vegetarian Chili, Texas toast

Tuesday Jan. 4th

left-overs

Wednesday Jan. 5th

ground beef with rice and Rotel tomatoes

Thursday Jan. 6th Crockpot Day

Hodgepodge Sloppy Joes, veggies, fruit

Friday Jan. 7th

Chicken Noodle Soup

Saturday Jan. 8th

left-overs/catch-up meal

I have a plan!

Yesterday we were in the midst of a snow storm. We didn't get a lot of snow but it was very windy and snow was blowing everywhere. I decided to not go anywhere except the grocery store. I really wouldn't have even gone there but our fridge was empty. Literally empty. I sat down with Steve to make our menu for the next two weeks and make our grocery list. Yesterday was also a good day to decide what I wanted to bake next weekend. (I'm all about planning ahead... anybody know what they're giving their mom and grandma next year for Christmas? I do!) I brought out my personal cookbook and flipped through it. I considered some family favorites and some new recipes. Here's the list:

Cranberry bread

Chocolate chip-Butterscotch chip cookies

Oreo balls

Peanut butter cookies

Peanut brittle

Mt. Dew cake

Marble cake

Most of this will be going to my grandma's for Christmas. I already have some cookies in the freezer from my cookie swap in October. I also plan to make a goodie tray and the Mt. Dew cake for the bake sale at work. I've never made cranberry bread. I bought two bags of cranberries for Thanksgiving. I only used one bag and saw the recipe on the back. The recipe sounds good so I decided to try it. The chocolate chip-butterscotch chip cookies are my classic recipe. I figured I should throw something easy into the mix! Peanut butter cookies are my brother's favorite and I just couldn't resist making them for him. I've never made the oreo balls but the recipe only has 3 ingredients... how easy is that?! I plan to make the marble cake because, well, I need the practice! May is not that far away and I need to get it just right for Darcy's graduation. And last but not least is the peanut brittle. I found this recipe online. I don't really care for peanut brittle but my dad loves it. I plan to make it as part of his Christmas gift. He is still getting his traditional box of chocolate covered cherries. For the goodie tray for work, I plan to take a few cookies from each batch and some peanut brittle. I think that will make a nice arrangement.

If anybody wants to help, come over!

In search of marble cake

My little sister is one of the coolest people I know. And no, that's not sarcasm. I adore Darcy. I would do anything for her. In fact, I am. I told our mom that I would make her graduation cakes. I was thinking something simple like chocolate, white or yellow or even cupcakes. I asked Darcy what kind of cake she wanted the last time I was home. She thought about it for awhile and said "You know, I've always liked marble cake." Oh, boy. You see, I had never made a marble cake before. I didn't even have a recipe for marble cake. I told her that I would find a recipe for marble cake and give it a shot. My mom had two recipes which I made copies of. My grandma threw a curve ball into the mix by saying that my Great Grandma used to make a marble cake that was a mix of yellow, chocolate and spice cake. She couldn't find the recipe but I took Great Grandma's spice cake recipe. We'll see what happens. I also subscribe to Penzey's spice catalog (I've never ordered from them but I do like looking at the recipes... I told you that I have a problem!). The latest catalog had a recipe for marble cake. I made a marble cake from one of Mom's recipes for a pot luck at work. It was a tad dry. Tonight I made the marble cake from Penzey's. It wasn't dry but I still think it needs some work. Practice makes perfect and I really hope that my coworkers and Steve's like marble cake because they're going to be eating a lot of it in the next 5 months!