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2 Ingredient Pumpkin Muffins

Well, hello again!  I can't even pretend to be surprised anymore that it's been so long. 

This really is a two ingredient pumpkin muffin. Kind of. So I guess not really, but really. Are you confused yet?  

2 Ingredient (Incredibly Easy and not confusing) Pumpkin Muffins:

1 box Spice Cake Mix - regular size (525gr or so)*

1 can (400ml or 15oz or somewhere close to either of those numbers) can of Pumpkin Puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling, just plain pumpkin)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Makes 12 muffins.

Mix these two ingredients together until well blended. Scoop into prepared muffin tins, either greased or lined with papers. The batter is VERY thick, and this will make 12 really full muffins, but don't worry - they won't spill over. If you want prettier muffins than mine, wet the back of a spoon and smooth the tops. Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes. 

That's it! See - it is easy. And it's kind of two ingredients, if you discount the fact that boxed cake mix is a zillion ingredients.

* this little asterisk is there so I can tell you that Betty Crocker has made it's boxed cake mixes smaller. Yes, smaller. It still makes the same amount of cupcakes or cakes, but the volume of mix is less than last year. I know this because I bought some Betty Crocker cake mixes on sale and then found one box buried in the back of my cupboard. The instructions are similar, but the new, smaller boxes call for a little less water, and they suggest filling the muffin tins less. Subtle.  

Healthy Eating on a Budget: Alternatives to Pizza

This is Part One of Healthy Eating on a Budget and is about healthy, inexpensive alternatives to ordering pizza.

I completely understand the allure of ordering pizza after working all day and getting home late to a hungry family.  For my gang of four it costs about $22 to order pizza and garlic bread. I'd like to think we could get away with no garlic bread but I'd just be lying to myself.  There are the cheap pizzas in the city - Hot and Ready for $8 (mediums, and they advertise $5 but I haven't encountered one of those yet) - and once in a while I get a couple of those as well.  Any way you look at it, it costs me about $20 to get pizza. 

The problem with pizza is that for what you are getting it costs a lot.  Start adding salads and anything remotely healthy and the price goes up.  There are healthier alternatives to ordering pizza, that are almost as quick and easy after working all day.

Emergency pasta sauce

Tonight was one of those "oh my god I have no sauce and the pasta is in the pot already" nights.  

I like to have a bag or five of frozen ravioli and tortellini on hand in my freezer, for nights like tonight.  I had school last night until 9:30, a great visit with a friend, then worked all day today, then home at 6:00pm to cook supper for three incredibly  hungry kids.  It's a long couple of days, that's for sure!  And the thought of cooking at the end of them is just not my favourite thing to think about.  It's even worse when I've realized I've dropped the pasta in the boiling water, and there is no sauce to be found!

This is a recipe for a very simple tomato sauce that I made in a hurry for tonight's ravioli. Simple, natural foods are my favourite thing, and I may have just converted my kids from quickie canned sauce to this simple marinara type sauce.  Now, I do have a great meaty spaghetti sauce that I'll never share the recipe for (see mom, I told you I wouldn't), but for a quick weeknight meal, I've always just opened a jar of whatever-was-on-sale pasta sauce.  This sauce tonight was so easy and tasted so good though, that I may just use this from now on!  This is probably a half recipe of it, so just double it if you're feeding more than one adult and three children.

Oven Baked Salmon with Herbs

 

 

I found this Baked Salmon recipe on Recipezaar - my favourite recipe site on the web. Not surprisingly, I modified it from the original to make use of what I had on hand. This recipe says "Great for Beginners!" in the description, and that appealed to me. I also wanted a fish recipe that my kids would like, and thought this might work. Surprisingly enough, the picky-middle-child ate it up, the girl practically threw it at me, and the oldest boy took a few bits, said it was good, and went back to Guitar Hero. So I almost had two out of three, and two out of three ain't bad. A side of easy rice pilaf and some steamed broccoli made for a colourful and healthy supper.

String Beans - the U-pick variety

 

Here's the thing about living and eating frugal - you can save the environment at the same time. So how do I figure that? Well, the lightbulb went off while picking green and yellow (wax) beans the other day - it was a dim bulb, but it flashed nonetheless. My first priority for food right now is that it's healthy, second is that it's cheap. Luckily for me one of our local 'U-Pick' farms is happy to fill both of those requirements, with a little work from me. A half grocery bag of string beans (green and yellow or wax beans) cost me $2.20 and took a little less than 10 minutes to pick. The more I pick, the cheaper it gets - in fact, if I had picked a half bushel it would have cost roughly a dollar more. Lesson number two for the day - ask the prices before you pick. How does this save the environment? Eating locally grown produce is a fantastic way to reduce fuels used in trucking, commercial canning or freezing, and you support local farmers - all great ways to do a little part for our community.

Leftover Tuesdays 5 - Biscuit topped Chicken Pot Pie

 

My original recipe idea for Leftover Tuesdays this month, hosted by Pam at Project Foodie , was originally going to be Leftover Waffle Bread Pudding. I made a big batch of waffles yesterday in anticipation, had the bowls out and ready to go, consulted with Mr. Chef about bread puddings - and realized I was out of milk. I decided to ride my horse first and hit the store on the way home. When I got home - no waffles. Mr. Chef said "The kids were hungry". Really - you're a chef! COOK something, already. At any rate, I had to come up with a back-up leftover plan. Luckily I had roasted a chicken last night and had some leftover chicken. I put some thought into it and decided to have Biscuit topped Chicken Pot Pie. I've had the usual pot pies, made with pastry, but I was in panic mode tonight and wanted a 30 minute meal. Biscuits seemed the way to go. I'm pretty sure my kids have only had biscuits twice in their lives so it was time to introduce them again. A nice glass of iced tea, and we had a great meal. I should talk about the half an apple in this recipe, which is also technically a leftover. My oldest son only eats half an apple - ever. Don't know why. So when he set his half an apple on the counter beside me, I decided to chop the leftover up and toss it in the stew as well. I'm not sure if it added anything but it made me feel better. Thanks again to Project Foodie for hosting this month - look for the Roundup at the end of the week. And a big thanks again to David at Cooking Chat for coming up with this great food event!

Health and Fitness Support Forum

For anyone interested, I have set up a support group discussion forum at: http://forum.whats-cooking.ca/ Okay, right. I did set up the forum, but it's actually the support group my sister started. She is a health and wellness bully ... I mean advisor. Her current group has about 4 people in it, and she nags, chases and yes, bullies, all of them into working out and eating well. I'm sure they had no idea what they signed up for. She also cooks and takes them grocery shopping ... there is no escape. I've joined the forum too. When one of my co-workers (who is 17 years old) sees me eating an apple and says: "Since when do you eat fruit?", I figure it's time to change my diet. Writing down what I eat has been a real eye opener and has made me realize that I have the worst diet on the planet, even though I am one of those skinny types (yes, had to put that in, just so you all know that 'skinny' doesn't equal 'healthy'.) (Who am I kidding? I've been dying to say that.) What's with the picture below? I just thought it was pretty, and very peaceful. Not everything is as it appears; this was taken from the top of the mountain near Lexington, Kentucky. An accidental encounter with light on leaves. However -- two degrees to my right is the roaring freeway, racing across the valley. Peace is just a matter of angle.

  

Leftover Tuesdays #4 - Asian Noodly Thing

 

It's time again for my favourite food blogging event - Leftover Tuesdays! This months event is being hosted by Mary at Ceres and Bacchus, and was started by the ever clever David at Cooking Chat. My creation this month is a little bit of a stretch as far as "leftovers". The ingredients really were leftovers, as far as it goes, but I didn't cook the first round with them. Mr. Chef had a dinner party on Saturday night, and 'leftover' from that was one leek, one stalk of celery, some odds and ends of fresh parsley, and half an onion. MY contribution is the ground beef I took out of the freezer in anticipation of supper on Saturday night, which was still in the fridge, waiting to be used. So all the leftover odds and ends turned into Asian Noodly Thing. It's the combination of quite a few similar recipes, but using all the bits from my fridge. It tastes pretty good, quite different then my usual ground beef dishes, and it did, in fact, use the leftover half package of Instant Noodles in my pantry too (Clean the Kitchen Tuesdays, anyone?). If you'd like a little kick to this dish, and have a leftover hot pepper or two, you could add that for some heat.

Whole Wheat hand-me-down Breadmaker Bread

For a while it seemed like everyone in the known world had a breadmaker - except me. And then, luckily, they went out of fashion and I finally got one via my mother's friend. It's a circa 1994 Westbend Bread and Dough maker, not quite as sleek as some of the fancy new ones I've seen around, but it does make bread. Of course, being a hand me down, the bread machine came with no instructions or recipes. I searched the net for some Whole Wheat bread recipes, and found this one and a half pound loaf on the Westbend site. I liked that the bread recipe contained an egg for extra protein, used only whole wheat flour and didn't call for gluten flour (because I didn't have any). This bread cooks up nice and light, not too crumbly, and it slices beautifully. It might also be my imagination, but it also seems to stay a little fresher longer than some of the other bread recipes I've tried.

Spanish Inquisition

 

I realized today as I was making this that it isn't really Spanish rice, per se, but when I named it the first time I was really impressed with myself (yet again). This is more of a "Mexican Inquisition", rather than a "Spanish Inquisition" -- but I thought the name was catchy. This is my recipe that I came up with, using leftover taco beef (taco filling). Since it's Leftover Tuesdays again this week, hosted by Rachel over at Rachel's Bite, I thought this would be a good time to post this recipe. It actually came about when my sister challenged me to make a recipe using the little packets of salsa that come with the Taco kit. It's about fifty cents cheaper to buy the whole taco kit over just the shells, so that's what we both do - leaving us with three packages of runny salsa to deal with. While cleaning out the fridge one day I found some leftover taco seasoned ground beef, so I threw that it to my basic Spanish Rice recipe. Then just to answer the challeng of the salsa, I added that as well, and voila! A great 'clean the fridge' supper, using up some of my leftovers. No leftover taco filling? No problem - I've added a simple taco seasoning recipe at the end of the Spanish Inquisition recipe. When I make my tacos from a kit, I also use 1.5lbs of beef, just so I'll have some leftovers to make this.