Frugal Kitchen Day

Homemade pastry dough with cooked ground beef, onions and potatoes made up Cornish Pasties.  Typically I'd make these larger 1/2 to full size of pastry but I wanted them small enough for John to be able to heat quickly and eat in a couple of bites.  This is important if you're a Paramedic eating at work.

This meat mixture is a good extension for ground beef.  I have grated potatoes and formed this into patties.  I cooked the meat mixture so I could drain off excess fat and water and have a drier mixture to go into the pastry.

 

My finished Pasties.  I put three in his lunchbox, the rest into the freezer for a future heat and eat meal.  

 I baked chicken breasts while the Pasties cooked.  I wanted to take full advantage of the oven's heat.

  

Milk heating for yogurt while all the rest of the cooking was going on.

I didn't think to get a photo of the yogurt jars as they went into incubation.  I used John's old work lunch box which is a hard shell six pack cooler.

I saved the water in the cooler to pour over my potted plants.

 Three pint jars of yogurt.  Cost?  About $1.50 for three pints.  Next batch will cost about $.50 because I can use my own yogurt as the starter.
I ate a cupful of this tonight and sweetened it with a packet of Splenda which was more than enough for sweetening.  Homemade yogurt is not tangy or bitter like store bought.

 Vegetable ends and leftovers.  I grated carrots for two dishes, chopped celery for John's lunch and eggrolls.
There is almost a whole carrot here which seems wasteful, doesn't it?  Well it is and it isn't. Typically when I save vegetables for making broth I don't have anywhere near enough carrot and end up adding one or two to the pot.  Since I'd scraped this carrot and didn't need it, I figured I'd just put it in the bag of vegetables for broth.

 Cabbage, carrots, broccoli stems, onions, red bell peppers, garlic make up my egg roll filling.  I saved broccoli stems last time I ate broccoli.  Sorry to say this wasn't entirely a frugal thing.  It was a salvage operation.  The cabbage and the broccoli had both gotten a bit past prime.  I had half a crown of broccoli florets turn yellow.  I trimmed those off as they were truly past eating but the stems were firm and crisp yet.  Chopped broccoli stem is much like celery in texture.
I set the cabbage mixture to drain after it steamed in the Dutch oven.  I'll make the egg rolls on Sunday.  I'd thought I'd get them made today but ran out of time.  I'll bake and then put in the freezer.  We'll reheat the frozen egg rolls in the microwave.

 Those are roots on the cabbage end.  I set it in water to see if it will grow.  If it looks as though it is, I will plant it in a pot.*  it did root and was planted...and the rabbits promptly helped themselves to the tiny little heads...sigh.

 Leftovers from our dinner out the other day...fish fillets

 

Fish tacos.  I'd never had fish tacos before but I really enjoyed this meal.  I would like to do it again.  I saved a bit of the cabbage I'd chopped for the egg rolls to use on my tacos. 

The carrot cake I made.  This recipe was especially frugal because it made a single layer and called for a half cup of crushed pineapple, syrup and all.  I had an 8 ounce can of pineapple about to expire and wanted to use it up.  My frosting used a half package of cream cheese that needed to be used up.  Though the recipe made a single layer cake, my pan was slightly smaller and a good bit deeper than a standard layer cake pan.  I cut the cake in half after it was cool, using a serrated knife and filled and then frosted it, so I ended up with two layers from my one layer recipe!  How's that for stretching things out? 

While the carrot cake was baking, I added a pan of biscuits to the oven.  I didn't think to take a photo of those, which is a shame as they were very pretty.  They rose high and turned a lovely golden brown.  John and I almost finished them off between having them for supper and breakfast.

Between all the cooking and the clearing up afterward, I felt like I'd put in a hard day's work.   Well it was a hard day's work but so productive at the same time.