Go for the Big Meat

Hammy twice baked potatoes and turnips with butter

One of the best ways to save money is to go for the big meat.  I’m talking about the whole chicken and the whole ham.  The big meat is the best because it is super versatile and stretches out for a long time.  Our big purchase this week was a ham.  I love ham.  When Thanksgiving and Christmas come around, I always pick the ham over the turkey – that sugar-coated, spiral-sliced goodness wins me over every time.  It doesn’t have to be a holiday to enjoy ham, yet it is rarely part of a normal weekly menu.  Why?  Because it’s so big!  But, you shouldn’t fear the big meat.  A nice butt section ham, unsliced, is a cheap piece of meat.  Here’s how to handle it:

Night #1 – Whole ham slices, veggie, starch.

Take the big ham out of the plastic and plop it on a foil-lined pan.  Take your knife and score diagonally in a criss-cross pattern so you have little diamonds all over the surface of your ham.  For fun and flavor, poke whole cloves into the intersections of the criss-crosses.  Bake 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hour.   Cook up glaze:

2 tsp. orange rind

1 cup orange juice

1/2 packed brown sugar

4 tsp. cornstarch

1  1/2 tsp. dry mustard

on stove until thick and bubbly.  Brush over ham and bake 325 degrees for 30 min.

This is stolen, btw, from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book – one of the best basic cook books in the world.

You do have to slice the ham yourself, but basically this is the same sugary goodness that you get from the pre-packaged ham at Christmas, only a lot cheaper.  My personal favorite ham dinner is a variation of what you would have at your typical New Years’ greens and beans meal.  I highly recommend rice, greens and cornbread.  Rice is best served up with Granny B’s tomato relish.  Greens are best with pepper vinegar.  Cornbread is best with honey.  If you have time, you can cook up a pot of black-eyed peas or Red beans, and you’ve got the best dinner in the world.  So… you have time, it’s Sunday dinner or something – so this is the first ham night.  It feels just like Christmas!  And really, not that expensive!

Lunches for a week:

Monday is here, and you don’t feel like using ham for leftover dinners.  Solution is – you have lunches for a week.  You have the always good ham sandwich.  You have Ham cut up on top of a salad.  You have Ham and potato hash.  You don’t have to creative at all.  You can be a pig and pick ham off the bone, straight out of the fridge.   But, if you do want leftovers for dinner….

Night #2 – Hammy Twice Baked Potatoes, veggie

Hammy Twice Baked Potatoes

4 potatoes

1 cup shredded cheese

1/4 cup cream cheese or sour cream

2 Tbl. fresh parsley

2 Tbl. green onion or chives

3/4 cup chopped ham

salt and pepper to taste

Bake potatoes in foil at 400 degrees for 1-2 hours until soft.  Cut potatoes in half lengthwise.  Scoop out about half of the insides into a bowl.  Add remaining ingredients and mix.  Scoop back into potato skins.  Bake additional 20-30 min at 350 degrees.

Night #3 – Ham Casserole

Ham Casserole

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbl. butter

1 cup ham, chopped

2-3 cups elbow macaroni or other small pasta, cooked

1 cup swiss or mozzerella cheese, shredded

1 egg

1 can cream of mushroom soup (or equivilent in basic white sauce)

1 cup frozen peas, cooked

hot sauce, to taste

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup bread crumbs + 2 Tbl. melted butter, to top

Saute onion and garlic in butter until soft.  Add to remaining ingredients, except bread crumbs.  Turn into buttered casserole dish.  Top with bread crumbs and butter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 min.

Basic White Sauce

1 Tbl. butter

1 Tbl. flour

1/2 cup milk

Combine butter and flour in small saucepan over medium heat.  Add milk all at once.  Stir or whisk until incorporated.  Cook until thick and bubbly.

Night #4 – Ham Soup

My favorite ham soup is actually a corn and ham chowder from Justin Wilson – definitely worth looking up.  But, this is a basic ham soup recipe you can adapt.

Basic Ham Soup

1 ham bone with some remaining meat

4 cups water

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup butter

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Veggies (corn, green pepper, greens, spaghetti squash, etc.)

bay leaf

1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

hot sauce, to taste

salt and pepper to taste

Cut remaining meat off ham bone, reserve.  Add bone to water and bring to boil.  Simmer for 1-2 hours.  Make a roux out of the flour and butter.  Add onions and garlic and saute until onions are soft.  Add to Ham stock.  Add veggies and seasonings.  Simmer another hour or so.  The longer it sits, the nicer it gets.

I am a big believer in using what you have laying around.  With that in mind, play around with this soup and add what you have. You can also throw in some beans or a starch like rice or pasta.  White wine also makes soup nice.  Soups, like casseroles, are very forgiving, and you can take them in many different directions.  And, they are a great way to clean out the fridge.

Buying the whole ham or the whole chicken is such an economical way to go.  So, don’t be intimidated.  Go for the big meat!

Pancakes without a mix

Tahini and Flaxseed Pancakes

There is no good reason to keep pancake mix around the house.   Cake mix, however, is good for the two reasons pancake mix is bad.  Cake mix is cheap (generally one of the most popular sales items in the grocery store) and you never have to worry about running out of the mix, because you use it once.  Pancake mix, on the other hand, is most infuriating to deal with when you want to make a batch and thought you had enough in the box – yet don’t!  And don’t get me started on those plastic containers you shake.  Like “place and bake” cookies they are just the height of laziness, not to mention wasteful!  The easy solution to this problem is making pancakes out of staples you probably have in the cabinet anyway.  You don’t have another box taking up space in the pantry.  You don’t have to deal with further processed food.  You know what is going into your pancake.  And, pancakes is one of the easiest, most-adaptable, quickest recipes there is!  Amazingly, the mix really doesn’t save you all that much time.

Here’s the basic recipe (I know the thing by heart, I make it so much):

Basic Pancake Recipe

1 cup flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbl. sugar

2 Tbl. oil

1 cup milk

1 egg

Mix dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients.  Whisk until smooth.  Pour into hot oiled pan.   Cook 1-2 min. on medium heat until bubbles form and pop.  Flip and cook for another min.   Serves 2-4.

This basic recipe is wonderful all on it’s own.  I make it often with scrambled eggs.  But, pancakes are a wonderful food that, after mastering the basic recipe, can be served in many ways for all three meals or as snacks.

Some basic variations that I love (Just add to basic recipe.  You might need to adjust the milk ratio as needed to make a good smooth batter):

• 1/4 cup baked, mashed sweet potato.
• 2 Tbl. peanut butter
• thinly sliced banana and chocolate chips (add to top before flipping)
• 1/4 cup grated zucchini (squeeze as much water out as you can before adding)
• 1/4 cup mashed chickpeas

By changing the recipe, you can make pancakes for lunch or dinner.  I serve up sweet potato pancakes often with green beans.  I drizzle some honey on them and the kids love them.  I flirted briefly with vegetarianism, and while doing so found so many good recipes for pan-fried patties involving beans and grains.  This concept is basically a glorified pancake.  When you think about it, corn fritters are just glorified pancakes as well.

Here’s my basic corn fritter recipe:

Basic Corn Fritters

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup corn meal

2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 cup grated onion (if you wish)

1/2 – 1 cup water

Mix dry ingredients.  Mix in onion.  Slowly add water until desired consistancy.  More water will create thinner corn fritters which require less cook time.  Thick fritters will be cakier inside when fried and take longer to cook.  Drop by the spoonful (or pour for thin fritters) into 1/4 inch hot oil.  Fry for 1-2 min.  Flip and fry on the other side 1 min.  Serves 8.

Pancakes are possibly my favorite food in the whole world, although corn fritters feature high on my list.  They are both so easy to make, and you really feel like a master when you can churn out beautiful fluffy pancakes anywhere anytime.  I like to use a cast iron skillet for them, because it cooks so beautifully and because it’s always on my stove waiting for  me to use it.  It probably would be easier to flip pancakes on a cast iron griddle, which I actually have.  But, I have a sentimental attachment to my 10 inch skillet.  It just makes all my food taste so lovely.

The Versatile Ramen Noodle

Ramen as high cuisine

So, I have decided to substitute playing mindless online games like Alchemy and Bejeweled for blogging!  Actually, I’m copying my husband as well, and possibly “Julie and Julia,” which we watched and immediately went out and bought the Julia Child cookbook (without intentions of blogging, but simply cooking good French cuisine.)  What’s more fun to write about than cooking though?  Possibly gardening, which I also intend to address.  Mainly, I want to write about living cheaply, eating stuff from my backyard, and trying to do it all while chasing around a houseful of kids.

I will get into the lovely details of our first attempt at backyard gardening, but today I want to talk about that lovely invention from Asia:  The Ramen noodle.

Most people relegate the Ramen noodle to the college apartment kitchen, and this fact is just unfair.  The Ramen noodle is so much more.  Living in Korea (which I will probably reference often,) I was introduced to the wonderful world of the cheesy Ramen.  The cheapest dish sold in the corner snack bar or take out restaurant, cheesy Ramen consists of the famous noodles, spiced up and covered in processed cheese.  Oh yeah baby!  After wiping your nose from the chili pepper paste, you think – what else besides cheese can I put in Ramen noodles!?  The choices are endless!

1. Cheese is always a good ingredient.  Cheese takes Ramen noodles to the next level, and should always be considered when making a Ramen noodle meal.  The Koreans have this very right.  You can get hot Korean Ramen packs at your Asian grocery store, or just get regular Ramen and pour on the hot chili paste.  The Korean style packs sometimes have little treats in them too, like dried veggie packets, mmmmmm….    On another note, do not limit yourself to just yellow processed cheese.  Upgrade to Swiss or Mozzerella, and you really got something good!

2. Think vegetables.  After cheese, my second favorite ingredient to add is whatever veggies happen to be in the fridge.  Today for lunch, I tried pan fried turnips, onions and spinach in butter.  Cast iron, btw, makes everything taste better – another day, another discussion.  Turnips and spinach you say!  Have you lost your mind?! …………. NO!  I have not!  Don’t be intimidated by vegetables – throw in what you have.  Lunch is a good time for experimentation in my opinion.  Actually, any time is a good time for experimentation – but lunch is less committal, especially if you are just cooking for yourself and possibly a toddler or an open-minded husband.

3. Bacon.  Bacon is just good anyway, but frying up and then crumbling bacon into Ramen is very good.  This, btw, is where you stereotype me as a typical Southern idiot who cares nothing for her arteries, but do not be so quick to judge!  I believe a well-rounded diet should include some good old-fashioned fat, which is much better for you than processed crap (exceptions include Cheese Ramen Korean style with processed cheese.)

4. Water ratio changes everything.  Do you like Ramen soup or do you like it dry?  When I taught English in Korea, kids would come with packets of Ramen, which they crushed and ate just like that.  I always thought it was fairly gross, but to each his own.   One of the best packets to get is Creamy Chicken, which requires some decent amount of water to make it good and creamy.  This pairs well with a white cheese and a green, leafy veggie.

5. Ramen + leftover meat.  Ramen works great with leftover roasted chicken, cut up pork chops, etc. on top. Don’t forget to add your veggies and cheese, if you wish.

Think of Ramen as a quick, cheap pasta base.  You can use the packet of seasoning, but you don’t have to.  You can invent your own sauce, or use something from last night’s dinner.  Ramen is a perfect lunch when you have kids who want something NOW, or you forgot that it was 12:00 p.m. but your tummy did not.  While by itself, Ramen seems a pitiful portion for lunch, full of carbs and nothing else; spiced up it is something else entirely.