Giving up on Non-Stick Cooking Sprays

I have been trying to find more ways to save money in my household and while some would think this wasn't a good reason, I do. I have decided that I am not going to buy cooking sprays anymore. Why? Because they are too costly and they leave a horrible brown residue on your pans that you have to really scrub to get off. Usually it takes a good scrub with a paste of baking soda and water. 

I use cooking sprays quite a bit and when I reached for the spray today I realized that I may be using it a little too much. It seems as if I go through this stuff quite fast.

The can says that a "serving" is a 1/3 second spray. Yeah, right. When I spray a pan with a light coating, it is more than a 1/3 second spray. I don't over coat, but it doesn't take long to go through a can of this stuff. 

Today as I was checking the grocery ads they had canola oil on sale for $2.99 for a 48 oz. bottle whereas the cooking spray was on sale for $1.99 for oil thinned with water with an emulsifying agent (lecithin) added. 

I've decided that while it is nice to have the convenience, I am going to give up on the cooking spray. I would rather spend the money on a 48 oz. bottle of canola oil. A drop of oil spread around a pan with my finger tips will do the same job with a little less convenience and it will be one less thing I have to store in my cupboard.

I have searched the net and yes there are "recipes" for making your own cooking spray by mixing water and oil in a spray bottle, but honestly I would rather not go to the bother of having one more item in my cupboard.  A quick swipe with my finger tips will do a great job.

Homemade Muffins

Thanks for your kind comments.  The antibiotics are working but they do make me drowsy.  I am also slowly being weaned off of Paxil which is great.  I'm looking forward to being off of it and having more energy. 

Tonight I baked 8 dozen banana muffins for my husband's cross country team.  I, as the coach's wife, have baked muffins for their breakfast on Friday mornings for 12 seasons.  It always is surprising to me how much these kids (grades 7 through 12) love muffins.  I have a list of muffins that I bake for them:  pumpkin, bran, banana, donut style, blueberry and applesauce.  They practice for 6 weeks so I just rotate them my  repertoire.   

Muffins are a treat for these kids as moms don't bake muffins much anymore.  These kids are always telling me how much they love these treats and I am always being thanked.  I find that even though they are being made from scratch, it doesn't take that long to make muffins and they are really pretty frugal.

I have a huge metal bowl that I get out for a big baking project.  From start to finish I can make 8 dozen muffins from scratch in about 90 minutes.  I baked banana muffins today as I was able to get some slightly overripe bananas for only 29 cents a lb. 

The next time you want to take a treat to someone, try muffins.  They are quick to mix up and bake and when you deliver them still warm, they are extra special. 

French Toast Bagels

I made these bagels today and they turned out great.  To shape them you roll out a portion of the dough into a rope and then you wrap it around your palm of your hand and pinch the ends closed. 

I tweaked a recipe by adding 2 eggs, real maple syrup and some other ingredients to get the French Toast Flavor.  I am going to make this again next week and after I have perhaps added a little more nutmeg, I will post my final recipe.

Baking Bread Isn't Time Consuming

Wheat Bread and Rye Bread

Yesterday I baked 3 loaves of wheat bread and 2 loaves of rye bread.  Lately I have been able to purchase good quality bread, such as Nature Pride Multi Grain bread on sale for $2.00 to $2.50 for a 24 oz. loaf.  It has a lot of fiber in it, and I use it as my back up for when I don't have time to bake my own bread.

In the midst of all of my projects, I succumbed to store bought bread.  Yesterday I decided that I really wanted to bake up some bread and I wanted to figure out how long the hands on part of bread making took me.  Well, it really wasn't a big deal.  I have a Kitchen Aid mixer that does the mixing for me.  Then when I had to knead the dough it took 5 minutes for the wheat bread and 8 minutes for the rye bread.  The bread dough went in a greased bowl to rise until double.  Great - I finished laundry and did some pick up and started to work on my livingroom on the walls.  When the bread dough had doubled, I punched it down, divided it into three loaves and then let those rise til double.  Back I went to working in my living room.  When the loaves had risen, I baked them. 

This was the process for both types of bread.  The actual hands on time was 15 minutes for mixing and kneading, 5 minutes for forming the loaves.  So on a bad day it only takes about 20 to 25 minutes for hands on time in baking bread from scratch.     

Cuban Bread using Amy Dacyczyn's recipe

Today I baked two loaves of Cuban bread, one for us and one for a friend.  Again, it took a relatively small amount of hands on time to produce two loaves of crusty Cuban Bread.  While I was mixing and kneading the bread dough I watched something I had taped from the History channel. 

Now I have homemade loaves of bread stored in my freezer ready to be eaten.  When I freeze loaves of wheat bread, I cut the loaves in half so I don't need to take an entire loaf out of the freezer at a time.  That is why the picture shows loaves wrapped in plastic wrap.  Then I double wrap all of the bread in two ziploc bags to prevent freezer burn. 

Also those cookie sheets that the rye bread and wheat bread are resting on are old blackened from use cookie sheets.  I don't use them for baking anymore, but I find them invaluable when I need to set things on a rack for cooling.  The rack goes on the old cookie sheet, the bread goes on the rack and then I set the cookie sheet on top of my fridge so that the bread will cool and our black lab dog won't eat any of it.  Yes, it has happened before.  In fact one time the dog ate 1 loaf of bread dough and it was not pretty.

Bread making does not take much time and you get better at it the more you practice.  Also, I add things like flax seed and bran to my wheat bread to make it even healthier.  Yes, I could buy good quality store brand bread, but I think I will stick to my homemade bread.  It is just as healthy and it is so much cheaper. 

Gotta Laugh at Yourself Sometimes

Yesterday I decided to bake an apple pie for today's lunch.  Seem's easy enough, right? 

WRONG!!!!!

and another view

This is what is remaining of the big rubbermaid bin that I use to store the 8 dozen muffins I bake every Thursday evening for my DH's cross country team for breakfast on Friday mornings. 



The before picture

On Friday when he came home from practice I put this large container in the oven for safe keeping.  There were about 1 dozen muffins left and I didn't want our dog to get into it while I was taking a shower.  There it set in the oven, unforgotten until yesterday when I started to preheat the oven to bake the apple pie.

So in about 5 minutes I started to small something funny and I opened the oven door and there were gobs of plastic melting in my oven.  I did what every other woman would do, I screamed.  My DH ran into the kitchen while I grabbed two potholders, pulled the oven rack out with the melting plastic bin.  My DH held the back door open for me and I ran out in the back yard with the mess. 

We started to carefully scrape hot plastic off of the oven rack.  We got as much off as we could then we soaked the rack in a steamy hot bathtub of water to try to make the plastic more pliable.  While it soaked I inspected the inside of the oven.  There were just two small pieces of plastic on the bottom of the oven and they came right off.  Well, in order to get the rest of the plastic off of the rack we resorted to heating up the oven with the rack in it (the hot water in the bathtub didn't work).  Then when the plastic started to melt again we pulled it out, ran into the back yard again and was able to pry the rest of the plastic off the rack. 

One hour after first discovering the plastic mess, I started to bake the apple pie.

The pie was good and there was no plastic aftertaste.

Wednesdays are Grocery Planning Days

Wednesday is the day that I go through the grocery sales circulars and look at what is on sale, compare it to The Grocery Game's list and go through my coupons to match up with a sale.  I love to go through the circulars to see what deals I can get to add to whatever I already have on hand.  I also love when there aren't a lot of sales as it isn't a problem as I keep a stocked pantry and a stocked freezer. 

I am continually amazed that in my small town, population around 11,000, that our two grocery stores offer wonderful weekly specials that you think you would only find in a large metropolitan area.  Those stores are Fareway and Hy-Vee.  We also have a Super Wal-mart that sells groceries but I rarely buy groceries there. 

This week I wasn't planning on buying much as my freezer and pantry are full, until I saw the sales circulars.  2 lb. packages of brown sugar are on sale for $1.00.  Tones' spices in the small containers are on sale for 50 cents.  Time to change my grocery plan for the week.

At this time of year we start to see the beginning of sales on baking supplies.  I can always count that from now until Christmas I will be able to stock up on sugar, flour, chocolate chips and other baking items.  If you check the expiration dates on these baking essentials you will find that the majority of them have a date that is one year ahead so I always buy a year's worth of baking supplies from now until Christmas.  By January 1st I will have plenty of flour and sugar, all kinds of chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch and cinnamon baking chips, and all different kinds of almond bark, nuts and cocoa that will last me until one year from now when the sales begin again.

I love to bake cookies for my family and to give away to friends, so buying these supplies at rock bottom prices is a necessity.  Storing these supplies properly is equally important because if, for example, I get bugs in the flour by not storing my flour properly then it didn't matter how much I saved when I purchased the flour, as it is now wasted.

I store all of my flour and sugar in big Rubbermaid Bins.  Before I put the flour in these bins I freeze the bags of flour for 24 hours.  I read somewhere that this will prevent the flour from getting bugs.  Then when I put the bags of flour and bags of sugar in their own separate Rubbermaid Bins, I also toss in several bay leaves to keep any bugs away.  Since doing this, I have never had any bugs in the flour or sugar.

I buy coffee in the large plastic canisters which are approximately 33 oz.  When the coffee is gone, I wash, rinse and thoroughly dry these canisters and I use them to store all of my chocolate chips and other flavors of baking chips.  I make a lot of chocolate chip cookies and a year's supply for me is about 5 coffee canisters.  So you can see why I buy these items in bulk when on sale.

I love being a homemaker.  Honestly I thought the thrill of it would wear off after a year and I would get bored, but I haven't.   I am very busy and I enjoy keeping a home and taking care of my family.  I also love taking the time to look through the grocery circulars each week for some great deals that help me keep my pantry and freezer well stocked and my grocery expense down.

You know what else I love?  A gift.  I received a $75.00 Hy-Vee gift card this week and I felt like I had won a sweepstakes. Some people get excited over receiving a gift card to a clothing store.  I am above excited at receiving a grocery gift card.

Baking for Others

Last night my daughter in law and I baked about 7 dozen cookies.  It was her idea.  You see our church got a group of people together to leave this morning to drive to a small town here in Iowa and help with the flood recovery.  My DIL came up with the idea that since both of us wouldn't be able to go and help, we should bake some cookies to send with the group to hand out to people in the small town of Colfax.  This small community sustained a lot of damage from the floods last month and they are still in the process of cleaning up.  We had a great time baking those cookies and felt like it was one small way that we could bring a little bit of comfort to that community. 

It was a beautiful morning today.  The temperature was in the 70's, the sky was a beautiful blue and it was such a wonderful relief from the heat of summer.  I decided that it was the perfect day to finally begin to scrape the picket fence in preparation for painting it.  My son had dropped his dog off early this morning so the dog could run around our yard and get some exercise.  I will have to post a picture of Brody.  He is a mixed breed, gentle loving animal.  He would run around the yard and come over and sit next to me and watch me work.   We have a considerable amount of painting to do before winter sets in and I was feeling discouraged as with all the rain and then the heat it was impossible to get the job done.  But today gave me hope that over the next 8 weeks we should be able to get the majority of the painting done. 

I received a phone call this morning from a lady in our church.  She wanted to know if I could bake some bar cookies for tomorrow.  There is a funeral at our church and the family requested a coffee time after the services.  I baked some nut bars.  The recipe called for mixed nuts but I substituted pecans instead since I had them on hand.  Since mixed nuts have salt in them I sprinkled a little salt over the pecans.  I had to sample one and they were very, very good. 

When I get a request from our church office to prepare a meal or dessert for someone, I always apply the rule that my mom had.  Give your best to the church, so I always do my best to make a special meal or in this case special bar cookies.  Chocolate chips wouldn't do - something about pecans on top of bar cookies that says "special." 

After the cookies cooled I baked 8 dozen pumpkin muffins for my DH's cross country team for breakfast tomorrow. 

By the time the afternoon was over, this is what my kitchen looked like:

Ah, but it didn't stay like that for long.  Twenty minutes later:

I always make a big mess when I am baking and I delight in it.  My mom used to get upset when I would bake and make a mess.  Now I delight in having my own home and making a big mess in the kitchen anytime I want to.

Thank goodness we were having leftover sloppy joes, watermelon and tater tots for supper.  After all of that baking I don't think I would have had the strength to cook a meal from scratch. 

This best part of my life at home is that I am available.  Baking is something that many women don't have time to do but I enjoy it and make the time.  It is almost like therapy to me.

Pizza, My Frugal Food

Usually on the weekends I make pizza.  Pizza is one of those foods that you can make as a way to use up some leftovers.  I prefer pizza with everything on it.  However the rest of my family prefers a few toppings. 

I stock up on shredded mozzarella cheese when it is on sale and I freeze it.  If I see Monterey Jack or Co-Jack cheese in the reduced display, I pick it up and shred it and freeze it.  I have never had any bad results with freezing shredded cheese.  Just let it thaw it and then you can use it on pizza, quiche or a pasta dish. 

As to toppings, I buy pepperoni on sale and freeze it if it is close to the expiration date.  Other meat toppings I use are:  ends of ham chopped up, pieces of salami, a few leftover strips of bacon, ground beef, ground breakfast sausage or for that matter sausage links, leftover grilled hamburgers, leftover chicken, leftover turkey, leftover pineapple and so on.  Any meat that is leftover from a meal that I can use on pizza, I freeze. 

One time I tried a new recipe using strips of chicken breast and it was awful.  I had all this leftover casserole and no one liked it.  I took the chicken out of the casserole and rinsed it off and the next evening I used it on pizza.  Nobody knew it was from the casserole from the night before.  I dolloped a little barbecue sauce on top of the chicken before I put it in the oven and everyone loved it.

I have never been able to make a good pizza sauce so I use spaghetti sauce.  I can usually get sauce for 4 large pizzas from 1 jar of spaghetti sauce.  Since I usually make 1 large pizza at a time I freeze the rest of the sauce in amounts for one pizza.

I make my own pizza crust which my family does love.  It is one of those - a pinch of this and that concoctions but I did measure the last time I made it so here are the ingredients:

2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast - quick rise
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
flour

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.  Add the sugar and salt and stir to dissolve.  Let this mixture sit for a couple of minutes so that the yeast starts to foam a little.  I use my kitchen aid mixer and dough hook for mixing up the dough.  Put about 1 cup of flour in the bowl and add the yeast mixture.  I let the mixer take over and mix it with the dough hook adding enough flour to make a soft dough.  The key here is a soft dough.  You don't want your pizza dough to be stiff and hard.  Then empty the dough from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and knead 10 times.  Then I take the dough and work it with my hands to form a circle and place this on a large greased pizza pan and work it to the edges to form a nice edge crust.

Sometimes if string cheese is on sale at a good price I will buy it, cut it in half lengthwise and then place the string cheese on the edge and over lap the dough to cover the cheese.  This makes a stuffed crust.

Top the pizza with the sauce, cheese and any other toppings.  Then, let the pizza dough rest or rise for about 15 minutes.  The finishing touch is to sprinkle some Italian seasoning over the pizza and bake it at 425 degrees for approximately 12 minutes. 

On Saturday I made a pizza and topped it with a mixture of mozzarella and cojack cheese.  I then cut up one leftover grilled hamburger and used 3 pieces of leftover bacon for the topping. 

I can usually get the spaghetti sauce on sale for 75 cents a jar.  One 8 oz. package of shredded mozzarella is on sale about every two months for 99 cents.  I buy my yeast and flour in bulk.  The rest of the toppings are leftovers or purchased on sale.  I can easily make a pizza for $3.00 and under depending on the toppings.

The best part is that my family prefers my homemade pizza to take out pizza.  I've made pizza so much that I can usually get it in the oven in about 20 minutes from start to finish.  

Another snowstorm?? Time to bake cookies

Another snowstorm is predicted for tomorrow with our area of the state to get the brunt of the storm.  Okay -- enough already.  Now we are close to breaking the measurable snow fall record that goes back to 1911.  I would rather break a record in the Olympics.  Do you suppose that if you live in a State when a snowfall record is broken, that all the residents in the State get a golden snow flake award?  Someone needs to look into this.

My way of dealing with winter is to bake. My favorite thing to bake during the winter is cookies.  Yes, I love to bake cookies.  The main reason is that my family loves to have a full cookie jar.  It is pretty easy to please them.

Back in December when I was stocking up on all those good deals on baking supplies I snagged about 15 bags of Hershey's mini chocolate kisses at 99 cents a bag.  Today I used my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and used the mini kisses instead of semi-sweet chocolate chips.  They are oh so good.

My chocolate chip cookie recipe is the standard recipe from the back of the chocolate chip bag with one variation.  The recipe calls for 2 1/4 cups of flour and I add another 1/4 cup of flour to the dough.  The result is cookies that aren't as flat and they hold their shape better.  They are still a little crunchy around the edges and soft in the middle.  Perfect.

My family prefers basic old fashioned cookies and here are their favorites.  Chocolate Chip is number one.  Then comes oatmeal, oatmeal molasses, snickerdoodles, rolled sugar cookies, peanut butter, oatmeal carmalitas and brownies. 

What is your family's favorite cookie?

Bread Baking

I am learning new skills in my role as full time homemaker.  I never want to get into a rut, but instead I want to keep my life interesting and learn new things.  One of these new skills is bread baking.  I have made bread in the past as an addition to a special dinner, but I have never made it consistantly on a weekly basis.  After reading the labels at the grocery stores for expensive "whole wheat, high fiber bread", I decided that I could do better and it would be healthier and far cheaper.  The fiber in the "whole wheat, high fiber bread" was a whopping 2 grams.  Big whoop!  2 grams is terrible and you would expect a bread labeled as high fiber would actually be higher in fiber.  So I set about making my own whole wheat bread.  I own a bread machine but I have never really liked it for what I would call day to day bread making.  In my bread machine the bread never raises very well and I don't like the hole it leaves in the bottom from the dough kneader. 

I chose a whole wheat bread recipe that called for honey.  I used half honey and half sorghum.  I also added flax seed to the recipe.  Here is the result:

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

These are beautiful loaves of bread.  I double wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap and then in two plastic grocery bags and froze them for when we were ready to use them.  For our family I will need about 2 loaves a week.  This bread makes wonderful toast and is great for sandwiches. 

The next bread I baked was cuban bread.  This recipe was in the Tightwad Gazette and while it calls for a lot of yeast, it produces two loaves in a small amount of time.  Again, it is great for sandwiches, if there are any leftover after our supper meal. 

Cuban Bread

When the blizzard hit our area 2 weeks ago, we were running low on dog biscuits.  Our dog gets these treats throughout the day.  I did not want to go to the grocery store as I have been doing my best to not run to the store when we need 1 thing and instead to either make do or make what I need from scratch.  I found a recipe for dog biscuits that calls for whole wheat flour, powdered milk, beef bouillon, beef fat (or vegetable oil) and a few other ingredients I have in my pantry.  I decided against making them in the shape of a dog biscuit and instead used my pizza cutter to cut the dough into rectangles.  These rectangular dog biscuits fit snuggly into my dog's toy "Kong" and she loves trying to get to those dog biscuits.  I made them for pennies and they are better for our dog than store bought.  I will continue to make these and will search for a peanut butter version for variety.

Dog Biscuits

About every other year I have been baking cardamom bread to give away as gifts.  This is a bread that my mom would bake at Christmas time.  I am Swedish and in our household it was a traditional Christmas bread.  If you have never tasted cardamom or wonder what it is like, it is readily available in the spice section of the grocery store.  I believe it is in the ginger family, but I think its taste and aroma is hard to describe except to say that it's flavor is delicious especially in this sweet bread.  The taste and aroma of this bread takes me back to my childhood and our Christmases in Western New York.  On Saturday I baked 8 braided loaves of this bread for gift giving.

The hamburger buns were a last minute addition to my baking day as I decided to have Sloppy Joes for Sunday lunch.  We were going to have a busy afternoon so I put the ingredients for Sloppy Joes into my crock pot before going to church and when we came home it was ready.  Sloppy Joes served over homemade hamburger buns is a treat. 

All in all I am enjoying baking bread.  I love kneading the dough and I feel as if I am getting my upper arms in shape as I work the dough.  Beyond enjoying the process of mixing, kneading, shaping and baking my own loaves I love that I know what is going into each loaf of bread and that the bread is healthier and far cheaper than anything you can get at the store.  There is nothing like the smell of bread baking in the oven or the delight of your family as you serve them fresh, homemade bread. 

Cardamom Bread and Hamburger Buns

Baking Pies

We are having Thanksgiving at my in-laws tomorrow and I am baking the pies.  There will be 7 adults and 2 small children.  In previous years I would provide several pies so everyone could have their favorite.  I would then bring home the leftovers and after a couple of days I would end up throwing out a lot of uneaten pie.  This year I am baking a pumpkin pie, an apple pie and 2 pecan tarts.  My father in law and my DS love pecan pie and instead of baking 1 pie for the two of them I am opting for two tarts.  I will have some leftover pie to bring home and that will come in handy as I am making a turkey dinner on Friday so we can have turkey leftovers.

Over the past couple of years Sara Lee and Mrs. Smith's pies have always been on sale for as low as $2.00 a pie (without a coupon).  This year is no different.  I love to bake and being home I now have the time to bake pies.  It probably costs more for me to bake a homemade pie this year (but not by much) but it is oh so worth it.  As a little girl I watched my mom make pie crusts and roll the dough out.  I have never been afraid to make my own pie crusts and if the edges don't look perfectly pinched, it doesn't matter.

I am approaching this holiday season differently than in years' past.   I have time to enjoy the season.  For the first time in years I will be able to decorate at my leisure, I will be able to bake cookies and make candy before Christmas Eve.  I will be able to get the presents purchased and wrapped way ahead of time.

Years ago in sheer frustration due to the many tasks that were pulling me every which way I told my husband that I was beginning to hate Thanksgiving and Christmas because of all the things I had to do.  His response - "Then quit doing it."  The point he was making to me was that I was missing what it was all about.  He was so right.  I quit baking a lot of cookies and settled on the good ole standby sugar cookie.  I made 1 kind of fudge and I cut back on not making a Christmas ornament, put up minimal decorations and scaled back to what I could handle being a working mom.  This included buying store bought frozen pies.

So this afternoon as I was baking pies my mind raced back to when I was a child with an apron wrapped around me, sitting on a stool next to the table watching my mom rolling out pie crusts.  The one thing I have missed for years was the baking that I had always loved.  Now this year I can return to what I love and that is homemade pies and goodies.

To anyone who reads this may each and everyone of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.