Projet 5:Getting Your Kitchen to Work for You

Today’s topic is favorite kitchen appliances and how they help to get dinner on the table.

Mom’s answer: 1. The microwave for cooking frozen veggies or making a white sauce while other stuff is on the stove.

1. Wit-Whip for making no lump gravy.  http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/wit-whip-beater
2. Food processor to speed up prepping food. It’s also great for mixing cookie dough, too.

Me: My favorite kitchen appliance is the mini food processor. Since I cook food to take to work, the mini food processor is perfect for me for making sauces, or chopping up onions and peppers, etc.

What’s your favorite kitchen gadget?

My review of The “What’s For Dinner?” Solution

 This is one of the best books I have read that helps women turn what can become a daily nightmare into an easier decision. “After putting [Lipp’s] 21-day plan into action, women will save time--with bulk shopping and cooking, save money--no more last-minute phone calls to the delivery pizza place, save their sanity--forget the last-minute scramble every night and know what they’re having for dinner.” This is a straight forward and encouraging book to help women conquer that sometimes dreaded task of planning dinners. It is a comprehensive book giving tips and recipes that are so good. I look forward to trying quite a few recipes in the coming days.

I received this book free from the author for the purpose of this review.

Project 4: Family Favorites

Here are three recent favorites.

Beef Taco Skillet (recipe from Campbell’s Soup)

Prep: 5 minutes

Cook: 20 minutes

Makes: 4 Servings (about 1 cup each)

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup (Regular or Health Request)
• 1/2 cup Pace Picante Sauce (salsa)
• 1/2 cup water
• 6 flour tortillas (6-inch), cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Cook the beef in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until well browned, stirring often to separate meat. Pour off any fat.
2. Stir the soup, picante sauce, water and tortillas in the skillet and heat to a boil. Reduce the heat to low. Cook for 5 minutes. Stir the beef mixture. Top with the cheese.

Recipe Tips:

1. Flavor variation: for Creamy Mexican Fiesta Skillet, stir in 1/2 cup sour cream with the soup.
2. Flavor variation: for Ranchero-Style Skillet, use corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas and shredded Mexican cheese blend instead of Cheddar.
3. Serving suggestion: Serve with a mixed green salad with Italian salad dressing and corn on the cob. For dessert serve a store-bought flan.

Spinach & Sausage Rigatoni

(From my friend Holly)

This is by far my newest, most favorite meal!!! It is soooooooo good!! This is great for busy nights (like when Paul has to be at Youth by 6:30p) because it’s really quick. As promised, Katie, here is the recipe! Enjoy!

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 12 minutes

Ingredients:
1 lb Rigatoni Pasta (or any pasta really)
1 lb Kielbasa Sausage, halved and sliced
2 tsp Olive Oil
2 cloves Garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 c. chicken broth
5 oz fresh spinach (I use much more since it reduces so much)
4 tbsp Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

1. Cook pasta according to package instructions.
2. Meanwhile, coat large skillet w/ nonstick cooking spray. Add sausage; cook until brown, stirring regularly, about 7 minutes or so.
3. Add oil and garlic (take a big sniff, it smells delicious!) and cook about 30 seconds.
4. Stir in broth, then add spinach
5. Cover and cook 2-3 more minutes, until spinach is wilted.
6. Stir to combine, add parmesan cheese and toss mixture into pasta.

NOTE: For a soupier dish, reserve about 1/2 c. of the pasta water and stir into the sausage mixture.

Hawaiian BBQ Chicken

Ingredients:

4-6 Boneless Chicken Breasts (mine were still frozen!)

1/2 Bottle Barbecue Sauce (I like trying different kinds of BBQ sauce

1 20 oz. can Pineapple Chunks, drained

Directions:

Spray the inside of your crock pot with cooking spray for an easy cleanup!  Place frozen chicken breasts in the crock pot and cover with sauce.  Empty can of drained pineapple chunks on top.  Cook on High for 2-3 hours or Low for 4-6 hours.  Shred chicken with two forks while still in the crock pot so the chicken will be well coated with sauce.  Serve over rice.

Why we like them...

The taco skillet is simple to make but still tastes great! And it’s easier to make and serve than making tacos.

The Spinach dish, we mix it up! We change the meat and the pasta to whatever we are in the mood for or have in the house, and use a full bag of spinach.

The Hawaiian BBQ is so yummy! You can leave it whole or break it up and serve it with pasta, rice, or on rolls.

Project 3: Kitchen Tips

Sorry, I forgot to post this when I got home last night. Day 4 will come when I get off work tonight.

What are your favorite kitchen organizing tips?

Mom: First, having all the plastic wrap/foil and various sized bags (Snack, sandwich, Quart or Gallon) on shelves on the inside of the pantry door. Secondly, having a drawer for all baking utensils and a jar of utensils by the stove. Everything is right where you need it. Thirdly, putting baking soda and salt in screw top containers (old Equal containers). This makes it easier to measure out the baking soda and the salt, and it makes sure it doesn’t get spilled. Finally, I enjoyed the "Magic List" on page 27-28, we have one too but sometimes I forgets to transfer it to the shopping list.

Charity: When I lived on my own, I had a list of what meals I could make posted on the fridge. I would buy the ingredients for 3-4 meals and make one, eat it for lunch and dinner until it was gone, and then make the next meal a few days later. (Or make two meals at a time, and then have a little variety.) This wasn’t ideal but it worked out since I was working full time and taking a full load of classes. I just cooked twice a week and had meals to take to work or to the office when I was studying.

Secondly, I had everything out in the open. I didn’t have a pantry in my apartment, so I had a little bookcase and a little three drawer unit that served as my pantry. If I can’t see it, I forget about it. So I made sure everything was visible, or my meals were written down so I knew what I had.  Since I was living on my own, and without internet, I would save recipes to my computer when i had access to internet, and then print them out when going to the store.

In the future, I want to have a nice baker’s rack where I have my cookbooks on the top, and my appliances on the bottom for easy access when not in use.

A friend of mine, had organized her spices in two plastic trays. One has all the baking spices, and the other had all the cooking spices. The only thing I would add to that, is to write the name of the spice on the top of it, so if you pull the whole tray down, you don’t have to look through each one to find the right spice (especially if they all have the same color top).

What are your favorite Kitchen organizing tips? I’d love to hear from you!

The "What's For Dinner?" Solution by Kathi Lapp, Day 2

Project 2: LOOP Meal (Left Overs On Purpose)

In our house, Sunday is leftovers night. Mom will make extra on one or two meals and we can pick from those leftovers for Sunday night, so mom doesn’t have to cook, and we can eat quickly after getting home from church in the evening. Dinner can be ready in 5-10 minutes after walking in the door from church in the evening.

Also, Mom will sometimes cook a large roast in the crock pot, or cook up a big turkey or ham and we can use that for one meal the day it is cooked, and then use it to make several other meals before it goes bad. For instance, when mom cooks a big ham, we might have ham and mashed potatoes for dinner than night, then have a ham and pineapple pizza a few nights later. If she cooks a big turkey, we will have turkey and stuffing the first night, then turkey stuffing casserole or Turkey ala king on later nights.

Here are some of Kathi Lapp’s favorite ways to use Left Overs On Purpose for chicken.

http://www.kathilipp.com/category/the-whats-for-dinner-project/

What are some of your favorite ways to use leftovers? Do you tend to make extra food one night and eat that a second night? Do you make extra meat one night and use half for that meal, and half to make a completely new meal? Or do you hate leftovers all together?

The "What's For Dinner?" Solution by Kathi Lapp

Welcome! I am doing a 5-day challenge for the book The “What’s For Dinner?” Solution by Kathi Lipp

https://www.facebook.com/kathilipp.author

http://www.kathilipp.com/

Each of the 5 days, there is a different topic that I will blog about. I’d love as much interaction as possible during these five days!

Day 1: Share Your Menu

Day 2: LOOP Meal (Left Overs On Purpose)

Day 3: Kitchen Tips

Day 4: Family Favorites

Day 5: Getting Your Kitchen To Work For You

Because I live at home with my parents, these posts will include a guest, my mom! I will include her thoughts on these topics as well as my own.

So here is Project 1: Share Your Menu

Some weeks, mom and I will have a menu set out for each day and I can tell you what we are going to eat on Wed and what we will eat on Saturday. But that is rare! In general, mom and I will make a menu of 5-6 dinners, and then each day we will decide what we will have for dinner that night. Some nights we have time to make a nice meal, other nights we need a quick and easy meal. Mom goes grocery shopping each Monday if possible. Before she went this morning, we talked about the menu. She had looked through the freezer to see what meat we had to use, and wrote that down. Then we figured what side and what vegetable to go with it. Then there were some pantry basics and personal items that needed to go on the list. Mom had also looked through the coupons from the paper the other day and knew what she wanted to use from those. So we had the grocery list.

So here’s our menu for the week:

Manicotti with hamburg and corn

Stuffed crust pepperoni pizza

Spanish Rice with kielbasa

Chicken and stuffing

Fish and chips (oven roasted potatoes)

Sunday: Leftovers

What is your menu for this week? How do you figure out what you menu will be? Do you go by what your family’s schedule is? Do you use coupons? 

Curious what Kathi has planned for this week? Check out here menu here.

http://www.kathilipp.com/2012/01/meal-planning-calendar/