So I’ve been having a bit of fun with our food budget lately. I’ve started a quest to eat super healthy, but to also keep our food budget as low as possible. Yesterday was payday, but I didn’t get to the bank to refresh our food money envelope and I also didn’t get to the store so come mid morning I was scrounging for something to put together for lunch. I am super impressed with myself. Check it out.

So I pulled out a recipe for “The Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever” from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book and got that going early this afternoon. This recipe is like a quick bread, so you mix up the dough and throw it in the baking pan, let it rise and pop it in the oven.

Humm, now for the meal. Well, I checked out the pantry and noticed I had a can of garbanzo beans and a can of black beans. I also had a can of some crushed tomatoes. I looked in the fridge and pulled out some random stuff. So I got ready and just went with it.

Scrounging soup: I Sautéed a diced onion and some garlic. When it was nice and sauteed, I added some wine and let it sizzle and cook down (we keep a box of cooking wine in the fridge, I bought it a year ago and it just sits there). I added some oregano and sage that I picked last week at Delaney Farm (our CSA). More sizzle. Then I threw in the two cans of beans plus a half can of kidney beans I had in the fridge. In goes the tomatoes and a box of chicken broth. I tasted it and it was boring so I added several spoonfuls of crushed sun dried tomatoes (packed in oil kind, sits in fridge), and salt and pepper. Yummier. Still lacking. Oooh, I found a bag of spinach that I got from the CSA last week and hadn’t used, in that went, along with some handfuls of frozen corn from the freezer. Ummm, just right.

In the end I couldn’t believe what I came up with at the end of the pay period. Troy walked in the door and the house smelled like fresh baked bread. There was a sizable pot of soup ready for a post work snack, with some nice whole grain bread.

Crafty Scrounging!

Last weekend I totally got hit with a dose of Amish Friendship Bread Chain Letter madness! Have you heard of this before? I hadn’t. My mother in law’s good friend Francis gifted me with a loaf of decadent and very tasty Amish Cinnamon Bread along with a bag of gooey fermenting liquid and directions. First off the bread was sheer madness, totally awesome yummy goodness. It was like really good coffee cake, moist, tasty. Troy inhaled half a loaf in in about 45 minutes.

So the gooey bag is essentially a yeast starter. Each of the first five days you mush the bag. Then on the fifth day (today for me) you add one cup of flour, sugar, and milk. Then you mush for 4 more days. On the 10th day you add more flour, milk and sugar and put four cups of starter into four separate bags (so one cup per bag). With the rest of the starter you make the bread. It makes two loaves of bread so you can eat one and pass one along. The COOLEST part is that you now have 4 bags of starter. So keep one for yourself and pass along the other three to friends. Hence CHAIN LETTER. Except…it’s just bread starter, and nobody dies or has bad luck if you don’t use it.

Although Francis grew up in Amish country I don’t think that Amish Friendship Bread is actually Amish (especially after reading up on Wikipedia about it). It calls for a package of instant Vanilla Pudding, and well, I don’t think the Amish folks are into Jello-O brand products. They are a sort-of “do-it-yourself” kind of people! I found a website that has lots of variations on the recipe, and different ways to use the starter for things like brownies and muffins. Yum!

So, I’m thinking Laura and Hillary? Are you ladies game? Anyone else game? I can overnight it in the mail to you. I’m thinking that we need to come up with some super low calorie, whole grain variations! Something along the lines of Hillary’s Cinnamon Swirl bread, using what I am now calling “Friendship Starter”.

Swim like a rock star at Masters in the morning, hitting your 100’s in 1:35 in the meter pool. Mix with a trip to the plant sale at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Top with a loaf of Cinnamon Swirl Whole Wheat Bread gifted from a wonderful Friend. Bake for an afternoon. Funk Gone.

Ahhh, I can feel the release of the the funk. The tight shoulders are relaxing. The smile is coming back. The funk is on an outbound train, headed somewhere else. Today’s events (thus far) really helped the funk exodus.

The morning started off with a solid swim workout. 15X100M all under 1:40, lots around 1:35. Then 500 kick set followed by 10X50 and 8X25 all out.

Then it was off to the annual plant sale at the Denver Botanic Gardens with my friend Hillary. It was members day and we were there at 8:15 waiting in line with the 500 other members that JUST HAD TO BE THERE FIRST. What a hoot. Hil brought the wagon and we both had the kids in backpacks for easy maneuvering. We had so much fun. At first there was a total run on the herb tent and it was a madhouse, then we got word that the veggie tent was selling out, so we ran over there and grabbed what we needed. Ahh Crazy Gardeners, you would think it was a rock concert! After we procured our plants we walked around the gardens, all of which we are totally familiar with now and were amazed at how much has changed in a short couple of weeks. Everything is green and in bloom and it just sucked the funk right out of me.

I ended up purchasing a rosemary plant that I am going to plant in it’s own pot, two new basil plants, a cucumber (the little yellow ball ones), a patio zucchini plant (who knew…so uber excited about this one), and an impulse purchase of ANOTHER tomato plant (a sun gold that they were only allowing people to buy one of…this one’s a gift though because three tomato plants in ENOUGH for one patio).

Upon walking back to the car Miss Hil presented me with the most yummy, tasty looking loaf of bread. I am calling it Funk Be Gone Bread beacuse after I got home and had one slice of it, I felt compelled to write this post. Thank you Hillary. You guys don’t understand, this bread is to die for! Troy is going to flip a lid when he gets home and has some (he’s taking his EXAM today). Here’s a photo for your drooling pleasure.

Buy bye funk. Uh yea, Bye bye.

I decided to start growing some alfalfa sprouts. I love sprouts in salads and on sandwiches so I gave it a go. I picked up some sprouting seeds at Vitamin Cottage, along with a jar (any jar would do) that had a lid with a screen. I have seen these screens sold separately before to fit a canning jar (like these ones). The fist day I put my seeds in the jar, rinsed and washed the seeds about 10 times, then I turned the jar on it’s side, set it on the countertop and covered it with a towel (seeds don’t like sun). On days 2-5 I rinsed out the seeds (which became sprouts) two times a day. I just poured water into the jar and dumped it back out. The screen kept everything i n the jar. Make sure your jar is well drained. Drenched seeds keep them from sprouting. Again, I always kept the jar on it’s side and always kept a towel over it. On day five I did one last rinse and dry and then I took the towel off and set them in the windowsill for several hours. They greened right up. I then used a ton and put the rest in the fridge. Don’t put wet sprouts in the fridge, make sure they dry first. That’s it, super easy.

Now, onto my herb garden update. Houston, we have a problem.

This just in: My basil plants have Aphids.

My first round of defense was to spray with watered down dish soap. I use the Mrs. Meyers Lemon Verbena Dish Soap. That didn’t seem to help much. Although I might have been too gentle with my soaping, I didn’t douse them or anything. So my second line of defense has been to add more soap in the squirt bottle and to really give them a soaking. The aphids are hitting the underside of the leaves and are attacking with vigor the standard basil plant and are shying away from the “Windowsill Basil” variety that I have in there as well. My third line of defense has been to put the plants outside today. I hear (from the internet) that Aphids don’t like cold weather and it’s quite chilly today (plus I just gave them a dousing).

The other plants are doing divine. My sage is SUPER happy and I have harvested parsley, rosemary and oregano. All the plants have bounced back from harvest wonderfully. Now if I could just get my basil on board I would be happy. I know why basil is tricky…it’s because it’s so tasty :).

After watching the additional footage after “Spirit of the Marathon” I have been wanting the make the Avocado Enchiladas that Deena Castor was making. Luckily she posted the recipe on her website, and my friend Hillary found it.

I made them this week and they are TO DIE FOR. I made a half batch b/c the full batch calls for 8 avocados and I knew if I made the whole batch they would be gone in 24 hours and I would have to live down that fact that I ate at least 4 avocados in a day. This way, I only ate two…between dinner and breakfast the next morning they were gone!

The homemade sauce is really easy, so I suggest going that route. Also, I forgot to dip the fried tortillas in the sauce before filling and rolling, and it was fine. I just poured all the sauce over the top of them before they went into the oven, (oh and topped with cheese). If you are worried about the amount of cheese in the recipe, you can cut it back, less would have been just fine.

Here is another link to her recipe. Enjoy, and if you make them, Troy and I would love to come over for dinner! Ha!