Don't Cry Over Sour Milk---Make Waffles

This morning the milk was sour, and I quickly changed dinner plans to use the rest for waffles.  A combo of milk and orange juice and some orange rind will go into the waffles.  I make the waffles with low-fat Bisquick.  Can't tell the difference and I am such a picky person.


I serve the waffles with orange sauce.  When I'm in a hurry, the sauce is made with mandarin oranges, but tonight I'll make it from scratch.  I have a blood orange with the peel partly gone and some clementines.  Use what you have and save. 


Here is the sauce recipe. It's also good on pancakes and French toast. 


Orange Sauce: 

1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar (or a little less)
1/4 t. salt 
1 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons of grated orange rind
2 tablespoons butter
1 orange, sectioned


Sour Cream or cottage cheese. 


Combine cornstarch, sugar and salt in saucepan.  Blend in orange juice gradually; add orange rind.  
Cook over medium heat until mixture comes to  boil, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and add butter and orange secions; heat. 
Serve over hot crisp waffles spread with sour cream or cottage cheese.  

A slice or two of crisp bacon would not be amiss.  Great for Sunday Supper. 


This recipe is from (I think) the Chicago Tribune in days of yore.  I made it right away, and the kids liked it too, always a plus.  When I served it to my parents, my  mother announced in a big huff, "I am not putting cottage cheese on waffles!"  Hey ma, don't knock it t'il you've tried it!  Talk about a generation gap. 

Last week's chocolate pecan pie.  No, the crust isn't burnt, it's chocolate.

You can basically clone the recipe and use strawberries, blueberries or (Yum!!) a combo.  Sometimes you cook with the food you have.  Or make pancakes.  It usually works out well. 

Call me The Cheeseparer

Hobo Slang

Off topic, or OT as we say in the writing listserves.  I am always intrigued by colorful speech.  My dad came from Texas and my Mom from central Kansas, and they both spoke with lots of idioms that came from the farm, speech that would now be somewhat, well, inscrutable.  My mom always said, "I went to bed with the chickens," meaning early.  Something that would never happen was "she will wait until the cows come home."  Bad cows!   My dad, when something was too difficult said, "It's too wet to plow."  He called a big knife a "toad stabber" and big shoes "gun boats."  I love it 


For some interesting expressions and phrases, try The Hobos Dictionary




Good stuff.  Language is a living thing.  


We had our "traditional" Super Bowl meal of meatloaf, roasted potatoes and broccoli yesterday.  I always make meatloaf, because it is easy to eat while watching TV.  The Pack is Back!  


I made guacamole from an old Mexican cookbook (Elena's) and it was wonderful.  Full of onion, tomato, cilantro, jalapeno and fork mashed (still chunky) avocado.  I made my own chips from corn tortillas.  Better than packaged.  


Happy Monday.  Do you think they're getting any work done this morning in the offices of Green Bay?  Water cooler time!  


The Cheeseparer

The Ham Bone, Symbol of Eternity

Is it weird to blog a ham bone? Not the dance, but the real thing? The photo shows the ham bone just beginning to cook in the pot of bean soup. This is a frugal meal. Note large sprinkling of black pepper. Zowza!

We had a ham for Christmas instead of the prime rib roast beef that we usually cook. Actually, it was half a ham. Cost $14.00 instead of the $40+ dollars the beef would have set us back.
2 main meals for 3 people, then a few sandwiches, then ham for breakfast. After a few days, there was a big meaty bone and I removed enough for a ham and broccoli casserole--made with a cheese sauce and quite yummy.

Cooked the ham bone with some pea beans, lots of onion, garlic, some carrot and celery and a little fat (my bad!) and broth I'd saved from the baking of the ham. Add more chicken broth and a few springs of fresh rosemary and some dried thyme from the garden. Lots of black pepper. Yum! Cut the meat off the bone (ate some in the process) and had so much I put some aside for ham and eggs (2 meals as things evolved) and back went the chopped ham into the soup.

Died and gone to heaven. 8 servings, plus two breakfasts, and the casserole still to come. 4 servings there. Have we lost count? That $14 just keeps on giving. Double zowsa!

I think I've counted 32 servings here, folks. I've also got a good ham, potato and broccoli casserole recipe, but since we are in quasi-diet mode, I'll skip the potatoes.

So living it up with the ham has been a cheeseparing activity.

A wag once described eternity as "two people and a ham." My mom never saw the humor in that. She thought two people and a ham was great.

As ever,

The Cheeseparer

American Chop Suey

I had some mending and hand-sewing chores (long put off) today, and so I turned on Public Television, which on Saturday afternoon is totally devoted to cooking. The problem was, we are having a really cheapy dinner tonight (and tomorrow and lunch on Monday). This meal is called American Chop Suey, which I learned when I came to the Boston area and discovered a dish by the name on the cafeteria menu.

American Chop Suey is tubular pasta, tomato sauce, ground beef and seasonings baked in a casserole topped with Parmesan cheese. I bad been eating in all my life in school cafeterias. It was one of the few things on the school menu that I would eat.

Now this is tasty, but no one on the PBS or the Food Network is ever going to devote any time to this dish. It's homemade, frugal and plain. Not dreary. We love it.

I put the rest of the ricotta in mine, and used a combo of canned tomatoes and pasta sauce. Again frugal, maybe even cheeseparing. Meanwhile, Ming was roasting delicious chicken and cooking salmon on a bed of veggies and Christopher Kimball was going crazy with smoked and grilled pork chops, all stuff one can get excited over. Todd English was in Japan eating Kobe beef and tongue and noodles and of course Todd is so sexy one can get excited about just strolling through Japanese restaurants with him, vicariously. Then the Foodie Gourmet showed up and they did slow food in Australia and the sight of all that wonderful rhubarb was giving me
palpitations, and the wine and the cute black pigs.

So I finally pulled myself away from the quasi-gluttony and made my way to the kitchen to brown the beef, the onion and garlic, cook the pasta and mix everything together. It's waiting to go into the oven, and I'm still feeling a little let down, but of course the price is right, and unlike Kobe or Wagu beef, it won't break the budget. Hell, it hardly dents it.

Frugally yours, and feeling someone out of sorts,

The Cheeseparer

Stuffed Peppers - Yowza!

Our supermarket had big green peppers on sale for 77 cents a pound. I had some ground beef (from a previous BOGO) in the freezer, and all the other ingredients were on hand.

These babies were good. It would have been even cheaper to stuff the ones we grew in the garden this summer.

The second photo is with cheese sprinkled on during last five minutes of cooking. Yum! The recipe called for parboiling the peppers before baking, a definite improvement in getting rid of the harsh raw taste. Those Southern folks sure do understand cooking.

http://southernfood.about.com/od/stuffedpepperrecipes/r/bl30220q.htm

Collecting Junque and Collectibles in a Faltering Economy

This is from Kovel's email newsletter. Some good thoughts. I had just about given up on this blog, as no one is reading it, but what the hell?

From Kovel's:

News, News, News
COLLECTORS VS. THE ECONOMY
Collectors should be able to survive a bad economy better than most. We are used to buying "used" things. Antiques and collectibles are all recycled parts of the best of the past. Buying good "used" furniture from consignment shops or a Salvation Army store is a challenge, but a knowing collector can search and find a worthwhile antique. Vintage clothing is praised by our friends and we brag about shopping at secondhand stores. We are trained to barter and negotiate prices by our years of buying at flea markets. Now it is acceptable to use the same money-saving techniques at local department stores. And of course we understand the financial gains from a garage sale, cashing in old gold and silver, and redecorating by refinishing, painting, and reworking some inexpensive "finds." We learned to repair our antiques, so we have always balked at buying a new blender when an old one can be made to work. We already like to cook from scratch, so let's do everything the old-fashioned way. Let's "waste not--want not." And don’t forget to clip grocery coupons and make the kids turn off the lights when they leave a room.

Eating Cheap

Just back from Northern Nevada where the living is frugal because no one has much money.

Chicken and rice: the day after I returned, I was busy with unpacking, bills, mail, laundry, well, you know, a million and one things which did not yet include grocery shopping.
Found two nice boneless, skinless chicken breast pieces in the freezer. Halves from the look of them. While they thawed, I got out the rice and put some dried tomatoes to soak. Chopped up 3/4 of a red onion and some garlic.

When the breasts were thawed, I cut each in half and sauteed them in a mixture of butter and canola oil. For the yin and the yang as it were. Removed the chicken from the skillet and dumped in the onion and garlic. Once that was softened I added the tomato and a generous pinch of red pepper flakes, salt, pepper and another pinch of Herbes de Province. Cook the seasonings for a minute them dumped the rice in and sauteed that. Opened a carton of low-salt chicken broth and measured out the correct amount for the rice, minus what the tomato water would add. Dumped the broths in and set the breasts back on top of the rice/veggie mixture. Put a tight-fitting lid on the skillet and put the whole business into the oven for 20 minutes.

Served with a can (79 cents) whole green beans. This was really tasty and we made two meals out of it which made it even cheaper. The second night I served carrots and a salad along with the chicken dish.

Today, I found some pieces of pot roast in the freezer and made beef and barley vegetable soup. This will also make two meals. Browned onion, garlic, carrots, and celery until limp. Added some thawed peas and a handful of grape tomatoes. Paprika, salt, pepper, and some cilantro and dill thinnings from the garden. Poured in the barley and added the leftover chicken broth from the previous meal along with a carton of mushroom brother from the Ocean State Job Lot ($1.50). Are you getting the idea? This meal cost next to nothing. We had a salad and some bread sticks also from the Job Lot.

I hope you keep barley, beans, lentils, rice, couscous, pasta and grains around. They are cheap, nutricious and filling. I always have onions, garlic, carrots, celery and tomatoes, and frozen peas in the freezer. Chicken vegetable, beef barley, the soups practically make themselves. Keep herbs on hand or better yet, grown your own.

Plan your meals around the grocery store's specials. And learn to make your own pizza. We can buy the dough for $1.59 and enjoy experimenting with various meats, veggies and cheeses. When tomatoes and basil are in season, you can't go wrong.

The Cheeseparer