Emergency Lunches and Bakery Outlet Stores

I'm finally starting to explore the area after almost five years at my office. I knew about the H&S Bakery outlet store and had been there once but I didn't realize just how close it was to my office until we started ordering lunches from Attman's. The outlet store is so much fun. They've got discounted bread on the edge of their expiration dates. There's all kinds of bread, rolls, cakes, pies, cookies, donuts and the trays of unpackaged bread. I walked out of there with nine loaves of bread for $8.30. 1 half loaf of marble rye with a sell by date of tomorrow, 1 loaf of white bread (I hear that people eat this stuff), 2 loaves of multi-grain bread (BOGO), 4 loaves of unsliced raisin bread ($1 each) and a steaming hot loaf of unsliced multi-grain. I strongly advise checking out your local bakery outlet, if you have one, to help stretch your grocery budget. Yes, it would be better to make your own bread...but I'm not baking bread so I can make bread pudding.

As I've mentioned before, I like to cook multiple batches of food then freeze the leftovers for future meals. I have containers of various soups, baked pasta, and things on rice sitting in my freezer at home; but I don't have any at work. DBF and I went over to our friends' house for a monthly gathering and I made a batch of tuna tofu patties. I packed up a lunch for DBF but didn't pack one for myself because I thought that we were ordering out at work today. We ended up not eating out so now I'm eating this California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza for one and a Naked Red Machine that I picked up at Safeway. The moral of the story? Don't eat the last emergency lunch at work without replacing it.

Happy cooking! - KP

T-3 Days to the Workshop

As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm cooking lunch and dinner for approximately 11 people on Saturday. The menu is set and I've started purchasing ingredients. I talked to the teacher and we'll do the majority of the produce shopping by her house. I already have the corned beef and need to take it out of the freezer tomorrow night to start the defrosting process.

To Buy Here

• Lunch

1.  Lunch meats & cheese (pick up on Thursday after work)
2. Avocado (so it has time to ripen)
3. Lettuce (I have a salad spinner and she doesn't)
4. Alfalfa (I like the stuff at the organic market)
5. Frozen spinach
6. Bacon bits
7. Bread (from the bakery outlet by work and a loaf of gluten and dairy free at the organic market)

• Dinner/Dessert

1. French vanilla soy creamer

To Buy There

• Lunch

1. Baby carrots
2. Cellery
3. Broccoli
4. Sweet onion
5. Cucumber
6. Sweet peppers
   
7. Squeeze bottle mayonaise
8. Squeeze bottle mustard
9. Chips
10. Fruit

• Dinner/Dessert

1. Graham cracker pie crust
2. Cabbage, carrots & potatoes (for the corned beef)

Things I Already Have

• Lunch

1. Sour cream (for the spinach dip)
2. Mayonaise (for the spinach dip and egg salad)
3. Ranch mix (for the spinach dip)
4. Eggs
5. Chickpeas
6. Olive oil
7. Sesame oil
8. Garlic
9. Lemon juice
10. Sugar & Splenda (for syrup of lemon)
11. Spices

• Dinner/Dessert

1. Corned beef (16 lbs)
2. Pickling spices
3. Chocolate chips
4. Coconut milk
5. Sugar
6. Cornstarch
7. Milk
8. Canned pumpkin
9. Brown sugar
10. Molassas
11. Gluten free AP flour
12. Spices

Things Being Prepared at Home

• Hummus
• Spinach dip
• Syrup of lemon
• Pumpkin pie

Yes, I'm probably preparing too much food for the expected number of attendees but I'd rather have leftovers than have people leave hungry.

Happy cooking! - KP

No Gluten No Dairy Pumpkin Pie (Part 1)

I spent $8.67 on ingredients to test out the pie recipe. $3.99 for a bag of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free AP Flour, 1 15 oz. can or organic pumpkin puree and 1 pint of Silk French Vanilla Creamer; I had everything else at home. I probably could have saved some money if I shopped around but I purchased everything at the organic market for convenience sake, I was already there investigating the no gluten no dairy bread options. Well, I haven't tasted the pie yet because it had to be refrigerated overnight and I didn't want pumpkin pie for breakfast.

The recipe was easy to follow. I made the pie crust and pressed it into my ceramic pie plate. I brought the crust up to the lip but not over because I thought that it was getting a little thin. It baked for 15 minutes in a 400°F oven to a lovely golden brown. Then I dropped the oven temperature to 350°F and added the filling. There was some filling left, my pie plate was thrown on a wheel so it isn't exactly 9", so I had a little taste and it was edible. It wasn't as thick as the Libby's recipe but the pumpkin puree I got was thinner and there's no eggs or evaporated milk in the recipe I was testing. The spicing was milder than I was lead to expect from the reviews but I'm sure that the flavor profile changed after cooking.

Yes, I need to take more photos of what I'm cooking. I also need to find an auxiliary lighting source because all the lights in the kitchen seem to cause my food to look jaundiced.

Happy baking! - KP

Of Lists Big and Small

I will admit it, I have some control issues; I have been accused of being a Type A personality. I like to make lists. I've got the rolling grocery list stuck to the side of the refrigerator where I jot down ingredients that we're running low on so I can start keeping an eye out for sales. I've got my ingredient lists when I cook for large groups so I can shop effectively; I have the master ingredient list that I take when I go grocery shopping so I can make up a price book then I put all those prices into a spreadsheet to figure out where my best bargains are. Then I work out my time lines for prep-work, shopping, and what we're doing on the day of the event. I have a few short kitchen related lists that I'd like to share:

Things I should have but don't. (This is NOT a request for my real life friends to buy me any of these items; this is list parking.)

• Melon baller.
• Grapefruit spoon.
• Honing steel.
• Flour canister (I currently measure my AP flour directly from the 50 lb bag then vacuum the area around the bag).
• Kitchen shears.
• Juicer (one of those wooden ones).
• Strainer (for when I need to dust things with powdered sugar or sift flour).
• Basting/pastry brush.
• A stainless steel pot somewhere between the 5 quart and the 5 gallon capacity.

Things I wish I had.

• Mandolin.
• Fancy bread pans.
• A bigger kitchen and pantry.
• A grill
• Gas appliances.
• Double bowl sink.
• Shun knives.

Things I have but don't use.

• V slicer (it's a pain to clean and the blades aren't very sharp).
• George Foreman grill (it was useful in college but now just sits in the cabinet; something for the April yard sale).
• Pipkin (but it's so sexy on the shelf with my other medieval replicas...).
• Two shelves of cookbooks.

So, what do you think my lists say about me as a cook?

Cheers! - KP

Hibernation Weekend

I have a friend that likes to say that she hibernates during the winter; she watches a lot of DVDs, takes naps, reads and basically turns into a homebody when she isn't at work. I'd say that that "hibernation" was a good way to describe my weekend. On Saturday morning, my phone woke me from a dream about cooking pasta as I was saying "there are some days when I wonder if I'm wasting my life in an office." That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately but that's for another post.

R picked me up to do some grocery shopping on Saturday; a new MOM's Organic Market just opened up and I wanted to check it out. R likes grocery shopping with me because I usually know some recipe that uses some ingredient that she's never seen. Then I get all excited because they sell bulk tofu. I picked up some bulk green split peas and yellow popcorn (I wish I could find other popcorn varietals locally). Everything was shiny and new but it's a smaller store than the David's Natural Market on the way home from work so there was much less selection. I had hoped to pick up some bulk almonds but they only had raw and tamari almonds, I wanted some unsalted roasted ones.

Then we went to Aldi's. R is still building her pantry so she got some spices and canned tomato products. I picked up ingredients to make meat loaf and salad for dinner. I'm not a huge fan of canned and processed foods but I love shopping at Aldi's. The quality is good and prices are even better. There are some canned products that I keep in my pantry for "emergencies": canned mushrooms (they're a quick and easy way addition to spaghetti sauce), corned beef (nuke a couple of potatoes, slice up some round onion and add an egg to fry up some corned beef hash patties), baked beans (add some yellow mustard, brown sugar and Vienna sausage then serve over rice), Vienna sausage (for baked beans or with breakfast), corn (usually purchased from Wegmans because they offer a salt free variety), and of course SPAM. There's some other things but I don't want to go through the list today.

But the end result of this story is that I made meatloaf, salad and rice for dinner last night after spending the better part of the day on the couch watching Netflix with R. And I repeated the process today while DBF had his friends over. Tonight's dinner was fresh corned beef (as opposed to from a can), potatoes, carrot and cabbage. DBF had purchased some corned beef while it was on sale last year and we needed to eat them before the sales start up next month.

It occurs to me that it'll be difficult to have a cooking blog if I'm not cooking...I'll need to work on that. I also need to work on getting some photos posted here.

Be Excellent to Each Other! - KP