Thrifty Thursday: On and On We Go

 

Friday:  I made bread today...Well, first I made a mistake and didn't know it until the dough came from the bread machine.  I forgot to add yeast to my dough.  I stood there and contemplated the flat mess and seriously considered just tossing the dough, but I decided to see what I might do to salvage it.

In the meantime, I started a whole new love, beginning with yeast just to be sure that went in!

I looked up various ways to fix the unrisen dough, which had been very well kneaded.  I read that the gluten had plenty of time to form and it might not be receptive to remixing but if I wanted to try, I should mix the required amount of yeast with 1/2 cup of water and then mix it in until 'it is no longer sloppy'.  That seemed rather silly to me since the recipe called for only 1 cup of water to begin with.  Why did I need to add half again as much in order to dissolve the yeast?  If I have what I feel are quite reasonable questions about the answer to a question, I keep looking.  There were more suggestions to do the exact thing, all with varying amounts of water.  I did note the dough I had was starting to dry out a little, a sure sign the gluten had indeed fully formed.

So, in the end, I opted for the only other alternative: I added two teaspoons of baking powder and the dough into the mixer bowl and using the dough hook I mixed in 1/4 cup of milk.  I had a moist dough that felt a bit heavy but began to rise just a wee bit as I patted it out to cut into squares.  I didn't want to knead it much, so I didn't try to stir in more flour.

What I ended up with were 'rolls' that resembled Angel Biscuits in flavor.   They were pretty darn good, and we've been enjoying them.  And I saved my dough!

I don't think I mentioned this last week, but John took the newly bought bananas from our grocery haul and set them on top of the toaster oven.  I didn't even see them there...until I was taking our reheated lunch from the toaster over and realized that the bottom three bananas were burnt!  Well as it happened only the skin burned, and we went right ahead and ate the heated bananas.  Which reminded me that once upon a time I used to make Bananas foster all of the time and serve over a single scoop of ice cream to the kids because it 'stretched' the ice cream out and gave them the feeling of a real treat.

Saturday:  Cody hooked up my gas tank to the gas grill and then showed John and me how to work the thing.  Yay!  I haven't tried it on my own, but I know now that I can easily do it.  And it will be good to have when the kitchen in under construction.

Sunday:  We went to get haircuts today.  When we sat down to wait John was given two coupons, one for each of us to use to save $2 off our haircuts.

Our lunch was quite reasonably priced today, and we brought home leftovers to have for another meal.

Monday:  I had to pack Caleb a lunch for school tomorrow.  Of course, we'd just finished off all the lunch-y types of things.  I put together what we had on hand: raisins, a bagel 'pizza' sort of thing, a packet of juice, applesauce.  

Supper tonight was a new to me soup recipe that called for cream cheese.  I used the cream cheese but as I ate supper tonight, I realized that the cream cheese was actually being used as a substitute for heavy cream...I think in future, I'll use the half and half I typically have on hand and skip the cream cheese, because it never melts as nicely as I'd like and I honestly don't 'taste' the cheese as much as I think I ought to.  

I also changed the recipe because I had some leftover pizza/spaghetti sauces in the fridge and I wanted to use those up, so I subbed that in for 1 can of the tomatoes called for.

I'd purchased one refrigerated cheese ravioli and one Italian sausage ravioli and used both in the soup.  For my money, the pricier than the store brand frozen variety cheese ravioli, was not worth the extra cost. It wasn't even as nice a flavor as the Aldi brand dried cheese tortellini.  The Italian Sausage ravioli however was delicious and well worth every penny spent.  Duly noted.

All in all, the soup was good enough.  I'll try this one again sometime but not going to rush to have it again right away because it wasn't a super economy meal, for all that I subbed out things.

I ordered one Christmas gift today.  I have one coming at the end of the month, as well.  I really need to go over my stash and determine what I have and who needs a gift!  Or even what I mean to do.  I've tossed around the idea of gift baskets of sorts, or gifts that will fit in a shoebox.  Both the gifts ordered meat that criteria.

I made a chicken and rice dinner today, very simple and easy and delicious.  I baked extra chicken for Caleb's lunch tomorrow.  I had enough leftovers to put up an entree each for John and I over the weekend.

I used the last of the butternut squash to mix with Brussels sprouts, dried cranberries, and pecans.  That is my third use from the butternut squash.  I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me in the past to break up a big winter squash and use it in portions.  It held up very well in the fridge, too.

I sat down this morning and worked out a loose annual budget for next year.  Now I need to go gather figures and see if what I propose will work with our actual spending.  I try to look at this from all angles, based on last year's spending, based on what I know bills will be and income. Bills are almost always increasing and so does income, but I've noted that income seldom goes up as much as bills do. 

Wednesday:  I got up early.  I've been setting my alarm and getting up so I can see Caleb eats something, or at least has something edible for him if he wants it.  This morning he ate the better part of a fried egg and a bite of his toast with honey.  I sent his lunch with him: Chicken, carrots, fresh diced tomatoes, an apple, a square of cheese and a whole grain fruit bar.

I've had a partial apple in the fridge for a couple of days, so I chopped it up along with some frozen cranberries to make muffins.  Millie tried one at lunch time and told me it was good.  John and I are waiting to have one at coffee time this afternoon.

I took meat out of the freezer today to thaw for tonight and tomorrow's evening meals.  Then I remembered I had Millie here tomorrow for lunch and likely would have her here later than today.  I dug around and pulled out the frozen pizza dough.  I've put it in the fridge to thaw overnight.  It will rise a bit in the fridge, but I'll set it on the counter tomorrow to come to room temperature.

Thursday:  I remembered this morning that I'd bought a big bag of bell peppers, all green except one red one, that I wanted to get cut up and put into the freezer.  Otherwise, they will just end going bad.  I was chopping those this morning when Millie arrived.  I put about 3 pints of peppers into the freezer today.  I really prefer red, orange, and yellow peppers for fresh eating, but I don't mind freezing green ones since I typically will only use those to cook with.

I made pizza for the children today.  I put some peppers, onions and mushrooms on that in addition to the required pepperoni.  Millie wasn't too happy over that, but it didn't affect Caleb's appetite in the least.   I wish I had remembered that Millie doesn't eat as well as Caleb does and had left her a segment of pizza with just the cheese and pepperoni.

I made slaw for supper tonight using cabbage, a carrot and some broccoli stems that I shredded with the grater.  I had in mind to make another side dish entirely but when I was digging in the drawer, I came across those two long broccoli stem pieces and said, "Use it now, or end losing it."  

Supper was no hit with anyone.  I hate when I make a meal that really ought to be good but just doesn't tick any of our appetite boxes at all.  Why did this meal fall short?  Textures didn't combine well, nor flavors.  The slaw was good but didn't suit the flavors of the meat entree the way I'd thought they would. The meat entree was great, but the second side was way too bland.  Ah well.  We had leftovers of the meat entree and I'll try to figure out how best to make good use of that.

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"The imperfect project you actually complete is worth more than the perfect project you never finish."~ James Clear