The World's Best Macaroni and Cheese

This dish is complimented by a green salad, and doesn't cost much to make.  The taste and the lovely crumb topping can't be beat.  If your January feels cold and bleak, make this recipe. 


World's Best Macaroni and Cheese  


 For dessert, use a pie crust from the dairy case and make a free form tart with blueberries (on sale, of course), mixed with sugar,  instant tapioca, a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg and dotted with butter.   Brush the crust with an egg beaten with a little milk.  This gives you a lot of bang for the buck. 


January is a hard month, with all the Christmas bills coming due.  Clip coupons and watch  your grocery bill.  Turn down the heat a bit.   Find some cheap but decent restaurants.   A  quiche makes a tasty dinner.    We like spinach and broccoli.   The classic "Lorainne" is hard to beat.   Find some turkey kielbasa on sale and make up a big dish of sauerkraut and kielbasa.   Add some boiled or mashed potatoes and you're golden.  Do eat some fresh fruit everyday.  This morning we had glasses of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice.  So tasty and refreshing. 


 The Cheeseparer

2 Frosting recipes for Holiday or Other Baking

Neither of these will break the bank.  Easy enough for a beginning cook, both recipes are ancient.  


2-3-4 Frosting:
2 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons cream
4 Tablespoons sugar


Place ingredients in a double boiler and heat over hot water until near boiling and sugar is melted.  Remove from heat and add vanilla and powdered sugar to desired consistency.  


Lucille's cinnamon Butter Icing 

4 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups powdered sugar
hot water
chopped nuts (if desired)


Heat butter in top of double boiler over hot water.  Add cinnamon and sugar; add small about of hot water slowly until icing is the right consistency for spreading.  After spreading on cake, bars or bread, sprinkle with chopped nuts.  This would be yummy on banana, cranberry or blueberry breads.    


Holiday  baking can be expensive, so start looking for sales in mid-November.  Butter can be frozen.  Keep nut meats in the fridge or even the freezer.  Wal-Mart had Gold Medal Flour for an unbelievable price this week. Chocolate chips are frequently on sale.   Save up coupons for dairy products, baking products and even waxed paper and baking parchment.   You should be able to cut your baking costs by these simple but frugal acts.  


My most important kitchen tip is to prepare the right amounts of food so as not to waste.  If you need to freeze leftovers, make sure to label them well with contents and date  and to use in a timely manner.  


We have discovered Dr. Oetker's frozen pizzas which are absolutely delicious but rather costly.  We have also collected coupons for them and waited for store specials.  With a store sale and a coupon, you are golden. 


 Remember that normally, your home-baked goods will be tastier, cheaper and more nutritious than store-bought.
 That being said, we bought a wonderful open-faced apple-cranberry tart and Trader Joe's this week for $6 and change.  We did this rather than stop for dessert.  It made six servings and was really good.  Everything is relative. I could have cooked it for a little less, but when time is of the essence, learn to make good choices.

My Grandma, she of the 2-3- 4 frosting, and me in Kansas eons ago

The Cheeseparer

Barley, a cheap nutricious food

This week I made herb-basted chicken and barley with root vegetable pilaf.  This was hearty fare that we got three meals out of with three (big) chicken breast halves.  Never expected to have it stretch so far for two people. 
I used onion, carrot, parsnips and butternut squash for the veggies and used about 2 cups instead of 1 1/2.  Used fresh thyme from the garden but substituted my own dried rosemary for fresh.  Stuck in a garlic clove for the hell of it.  The bacon really perked the barley up!  Root vegetables are cheap and the chicken breasts were on sale for a good price. 
A one pound bag of barley (did not by the fancy organic)  has a lot of mileage in it, and my next barley meal will be a vegetable beef soup with barley, also cheap with a lean cut of beef, more root vegetables and the barley, of course. 


In case you're salivating already, here is the recipe: Herb Basted Chicken with Pearl Barley, Bacon and Root Vegetable Pilaf



Winter demands hearty fare.  Soup is wonderful.  Eat more soup.

Yummy Hors d'oeuvres - Rum Sausages

For those of you who eat pork,  this recipe is a keeper.  The Brown and Serve Sausages  can often be found on sale, but don't buy the cheapest brand.  Any old rum will do.  Yar!  


Rum Sausages


1 pound package brown and serve sausages
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup soy sauce  ( I use the reduced salt variety)
1/2 cup golden rum ( or any rum) 


Mix sugar, soy sauce and rum.  Brown sausages on one side, turn and cut into thirds.  Cover with rum mixture and summer, turning sausages occasionally so they absorb the sauce.  May be made ahead and reheated.  Serve with toothpicks. 


This recipe is from my mom and is nice around the holidays. 

Christmas Cookies revisited

The Basic Butter Cookie recipe from my mother, a master baker who loved anything with a sugar molecule in it.

Butter Cookies

2 sticks butter (I always use unsalted)

¾ cup sugar

½ teaspoon vinegar

½ teaspoon soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ cups flour

Cream together the sugar abd butter.  Add the other ingredients and mix.  Drop by teaspoonfuls on a cookie sheet and bake for twenty minutes at 300 degrees F.

Chopped nuts (pecans would be good) can be added if you like.

 

Frittata Italian

I hope you have been enjoying the Thanksgiving Holiday while watching your budget.  Turkey is cheap, as are potatoes, onions, root vegetables, pumpkin and many of our holiday faves.  Stuffing or dressing can be made out of stale bread, onion, celery and seasonings.  No crown roast of pork or prime rib roast is necessary. If you do your own cooking, that helps immeasurably.  


This morning for guests I made an Italian Frittata which was a recipe in the old New York Times cookbook.  When they issued a revised version, the frittata was gone!  I saved it, of course.  A big frittata is a good way to serve breakfast to a whole table without the tedious business of pancakes or waffles, and more festive than bacon or sausage and eggs.  Of course, a strata is good to, but I am very fond of this frittata.  Many are made with veggies and some with leftover pasta.  It is versatile, cheap and tasty.  Can go up and down the calorie scale depending on ingredients.

Italian Fritata in a cast iron skillet

The ingredients are mushrooms, ham, eggs of course, Parmesan cheese, butter, mozzarella cheese, parsley, heavy cream and salt and pepper.  First it's cooked over low heat on the stovetop, then baked and put under the broiler at the last minute.  This served 5 generously out of a 10 inch skillet.  For a bigger crowd, use a 12 inch skillet and more of everything. 


For dessert last night, after a 2nd Thanksgiving dinner, we had a tart made of mascarpone cheese and oranges garnished with pistachios and honey.  It was very special, serves 9, and looks beautiful.  Oranges are Christmasy as are pistachios. 

Mascarpone and Orange Tart with Honey and Pistachios 

The recipe is from Bon Appetit and even calls for a dairy case pie crust.  How easy is that?

Soon I will be posting my mom's special sugar cookie recipe.  She devised it, and none are better,  Happy Holidays from the Cheeseparer

Seasonal Meals with Pork and Cranberries

Autumn in New England cries for pork.  We made this recipe last night, and it was yummy.  I had originally bought port wine (not the finest, but not the cheapest, either) for some Port Wine Ice Cream that was out of this world, a very sophisticated dessert.  We tend not to sip port after dinner, dunno why.
 Anyway, the port sat around and I ran across this recipe in my clippings. Tried it last night.  Walmart had canned cranberries on sale, the sauce, not the jelly, and I served it with green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes.  Very satisfying now that it's dark before five and the nights and long and cold.

Pork Chops with Cranberry, Port and Rosemary Sauce

I bring the rosemary in from the garden in the fall and snip it all winter until it goes out in the spring or dies indoors.  It likes to be snipped.  The garden chores are never ending.  Yesterday it was pull up the frost-dead annuals and scrub out the pots.  I have to replant my 2 thymes, plant garlic and daffodils.  Oh, why did I get so ambitious and order stuff.  Now it's cold and damp and only the orange cat likes to be outside, and he isn't gonna plant nothing. 


Our supermarket has pork chops on sale, nice thick boneless ones, that cost about a dollar each.  Personally, I like a bone in mine for added flavor, but bone-in chops are getting hard to find.  How lazy is that?