Chicken Pot Pie

With our guests coming and going, I have got in the habit of cooking almost all of our meals from scratch every day.  Besides being healthier than eating out every day, it is also much cheaper.  The SILs are getting a crash course in frugal living from us...I'm still not sure if they are convinced that this is how we actually live or not since all of the cousins as well as our friends eat out for almost every meal which is a very Vegas thing to do.

Today's dinner was a salad and chicken pot pie made from scratch.  We had a bit of chicken left over so I added that to potatoes, onions, carrots, and spinach, put it in a homemade pie crust, covered it with chicken gravy, and an hour later we had a nice, from-scratch, very inexpensive dinner!

Why I Love to Cook at Home

This evening we had homemade vegan enchiladas for dinner (I was going to take a picture to go with this post but while the enchiladas tasted great, they weren't very photogenic!).  Even though we live in the land of great restaurants, I still much prefer to cook at home because...

• It's cheaper.  For a few dollars we had a big meal for two (with leftovers).
• Leftovers.  I like having a complete meal already made and waiting in the fridge which means leftovers fit the bill!
• It's healthier.  Restaurants tend to pour loads of fat, salt, and sugar into their food to up the taste, but while the food tastes great, a 2000 calorie meal is really unhealthy.  At home you know exactly what you are getting in your food and can customize it yourself (lower fat, no salt, etc).
• It's good practice.  You get good at cooking by practicing (a lot).  The more you cook, the better you will get at it (usually).
• You get to make exactly what you want.  Many restaurant meals are a big hunk of meal with a couple of tiny sides.  I prefer to skip the meat and love sides so when I cook it is usually a tiny piece of meat for hubby and a half dozen sides.
• It can be quick.  I go to a restaurant to eat but some places want to stretch out the meal for ages, at home I can cook a complete meal in under 10 minutes if necessary.
• It can be an artistic endeavor too.  While I don't have an artistic bone in my body, I can whip up some fabulous cakes and pastries.  Baking is my kind of art.
• You can try new things.  Most restaurants serve standard generic food but if you shop at good grocery stores you can try a dozen different kinds of lettuce, pick up heirloom tomatoes at a farmer's market, and try a dragon fruit or durien for dessert.
• It's more sanitary.  I worked in restaurants during high school and college and cleanliness wasn't high on anyone's priority list.  You can't imagine what happens to your food before it gets to your table (our nightly news has a 'Dirty Dining' segment and it will make you never want to eat out again!).

Meal Prepping

I came across this nice article on meal prepping--cooking enough food at one time to make several meals--and it reminded me that I should probably undertake a similar project soon.

When I was working I would make a whole bunch of one meal (waffles, pancakes, chili, etc) then freeze meal-sized portions so we would have food to eat for future meals without having to do all of the shopping/prepping/cooking each evening when I came home exhausted from work.

There are A LOT of resources on the topic if you are interested in doing such a project (examples here, here, and here) and I think once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature to cook a lot of one item (or many items in a concerted meal prep effort) and then package the leftovers to eat at a later date.  Not only does this save money (less food waste and forgotten produce when you use it up all at one time) it saves time (it's easy enough to double or triple a recipe) and effort (simply take out a frozen waffle and pop it in the toaster when you are running late in the morning).  Simple!

Bulk Cooking

I saw this post on reddit today and the person made a whole bunch of burritos to throw in the freezer and take for lunch in the following weeks instead of going out for lunch.  What a brilliant idea!

Whenever I cook I tend to make extra for leftovers but I've never done a "mega" cooking that could carry us through weeks of meals.  With a bit of Googling, I found that people do all kinds of bulk cooking (and lots of the stuff they make and freeze looks much better than what you can get in a restaurant!).  Usually when I make waffles or pancakes I will freeze the leftovers for future breakfasts but researching this topic has inspired me to do even more.  I think my project for tomorrow will be to make and freeze some sort of WFPB vegan/nutritarian "grab and go" meals.  Not only will this save us money but it will be much healthier than anything we can find in a restaurant!

Smashed Potatoes

I am trying to cook at home more.  We tend to eat out a lot because #1 we are hardly ever home, and #2 nearly every restaurant we go to is free thanks to hubby's comps.  I am also trying to bring lunch and snacks with us so we aren't eating out every meal each day.  Restaurant food is generally not very good for us (lots of oil, salt and sugar added to make it taste good) and it just gets kind of yuck day after day.  So now I watch cooking TV shows and it gives me ideas of things to make for the next day.  A couple of days ago I watched Martha Stewart and she made smashed potatoes (something I've never made before), I looked up the recipe, and made them for dinner tonight.  They were super easy to make, they tasted great, and hubby loved them!  My message today is to try cooing something new at home.  There are so many places to find recipes online, you can save a lot of money cooking at home, and it is kind of cool to experiment with food!

Cooking Cooking Cooking

For some reason I got a lot of cooking done today even though that hadn't been on the schedule.  Hubby went to play poker today (the jackpot is now $92,000) so I stayed home (six hours of poker is five hours too long to wait for him!).  Today I made:

• Yogurt.  Milk was $2.48 a gallon and $2.78 for a half gallon so we got the bigger milk but really can't drink that much so I made yogurt with half of it.  Yogurt is so simple to make.  Simply heat the milk to boiling in a double boiler, cool it off, add a few tablespoons of plain yogurt with live cultures in it, keep it warm for about eight hours, and you end up with very tasty yogurt.
• Potato salad.  We had some potatoes that were getting old so I whipped up a potato salad (boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, chopped onions, chopped pickles, mustard, mayo, salt, pepper.  Simple.
• Bread pudding.  We also had some hoagie rolls that were getting old so I tore up the rolls, added milk, egg, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla, baked it and ended up with a nice dessert for hubby.
• Pizza for lunch.  I kind of cheated with this as it wasn't totally from scratch; I used a frozen pizza from the $1 store, added some shredded cheddar, chopped onions, and chopped tomatoes; baked it and had a yummy lunch.
• Beef soup for hubby.  Also super simple.  I just boil beef bones that have a little meat on them, add onions, salt, pepper, and vegetables, serve with fish sauce and lime and "ta da" he has "nilaga" a Filipino soup.

Daily Update

• Walk: 2 miles (I should have done an 8 miles walk today but was too lazy.  938 miles to go)
• No spend: $14.37 ($3 at the $1 store for a loaf of bread, a frozen pizza, and a jar of jam; $2 for a hot dog for hubby at the casino; and $9.37 at the grocery store for a gallon of milk, 18 eggs, a small yogurt, a banana, a bundle of Swiss chard, and a box of Junior Mints)
• Update this blog: yep
• Update client's blog: yep
• Photo: yep
• Genealogy: a little (it's fairly simple to take a family sheet and start adding info from FamilySearch and Google; this is a slow and steady way to get a lot of research done!)
• Writing: about a half hour (I was uninspired today)