A week off my feed

For the next week my husband and I will be roughing it, even by our standards. We are going to a week long training and since two hundred dollars is a massive chunk of our monetary budget, we will not be eating the meals provided by the base. We receive food stamps and we will use them. An ice chest in the trunk and a lot of cold food in our future but at least we will still be able to pay the electric bill when we come home. Thank you Governor Arnold for our budget crisis!
I will tell you all about it when we come home.

Quick and simple

A whole chicken is another example of a purchase that can be stretched into multiple meals. Shredding unused meat off of a boiled whole chicken and combining it into a pot with cut vegetables of your choice and either potatoes, rice or noodles makes an excellent chicken soup that is easy and filling. I like using tri-colored rotini noodles for my chicken soup. You can use canned chicken broth or the broth left over from boiling the chicken as the base, and add bouillon for extra flavor. Frozen or canned vegetables work just as well for this soup, perhaps better as you will not need an extended cooking time to soften the fresh vegetables. If canned vegetables are used, they do not need to be drained first. Preparation time for this meal is under thirty minutes and costs under ten dollars to feed six to twelve people.

Tip: If you use noodles or rice as your starch, add them to individual servings as they are served to keep them from getting mushy.

Buffalo Spaghetti

Children of today's generation have a generalized idea of where their food comes from. A parent goes to the grocery store and depending on their level of expertise with cooking, will buy items of food ranging from hamburger helper and instant soup to raw meat and vegetables. Previous generations had more contact with actual food sources like crops in the fields, or old Bessie for milk, cheese and meat. Depending on where you lived, meat sources also often included wild game, such as venison, elk and rabbit. Some of us are lucky to know the taste of wild game although a few would like to forget. During our family's time in Montana, we seldom bought beef from the grocery store, because wild game was so easy to come by. My two youngest children ate spaghetti, burgers and chili made from wild game long before they ever tasted a cheeseburger from McDonald's. Another unique red meat my children have come to love is bison, or buffalo as it is also known. It wasn't until recently that I was able to find buffalo in California, a situation often lamented by my family. Buffalo spaghetti is a front running favorite in our household, a meal that never fails to gather a table full of happy children who clamor for seconds.
For those of you who don't know, buffalo is a healthier meat than beef, although it can be hard to come by in some areas. As more families find it harder to put food on the table, many are going to return to hunting to provide the needed protein that comes from meat. Any meal that can be prepared using beef, can also be prepared using buffalo or other wild game.

Tonight's spaghetti sauce had bell peppers, mushrooms, onions and minced garlic sautéd in olive oil. Two pounds of ground buffalo were added to the prepared vegetables and browned. One large can of diced tomatoes and one large can of tomato paste were then added to the prepared meat. Water can then be added to thin out your sauce according to taste. This makes enough sauce to last two days. Leftover sauce can be frozen and used at a later date. I like to use my leftover sauce to make lasagna. Depending on your source and type of meat, this meal can cost anywhere from five dollars to fifteen dollars to make for two nights.

When I make the lasagna, I only require one box of lasagna noodles for my family of six. WIC (Women, Infants and Children) programs provide items like cheese to low income families with small children. Using the noodles, my leftover sauce, and cheese provided by WIC, a lasagna is easy to make. Bake lasagna at 375 degrees until the cheese is fully melted and the sauce is bubbling.

Now I have to go hide some sauce, so the children don't eat it all.

Salmon linguine

Last nights dinner was linguine with sautéd salmon and garden vegetables. The salmon was left over from sushi the other night and tossed with sautéd eggplant, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, minced garlic and mushrooms. A garden salad on the side with a rice vinegar and olive oil dressing completed the meal. It was a quick meal to prepare and perfect for hot weather.
Preparation time including harvesting the vegetables was under thirty minutes. I like to use olive oil to cook my fish because it doesnt burn as easy and it is also healthier. Now its time to send the children to bed and watch The Closer online with Willie.

Sushi at home

Every once in a while Willie decides that he is in the mood for sushi. When that occurs we have two choices. Miyagi Restaurant for all you can eat sushi at $25.00 a person, or sushi prepared at home for considerably less. I like going out to Miyagi's but its expensive in this economy. Other sushi bars can cost even more, so it was self preservation that made me learn how to prepare my own. For sushi, you need to select fish that is either sold frozen or fresh catch of the day. The great thing is that sushi doesn't actually require a lot of fish so the cost is surprisingly low. I spent under twenty dollars and bought three types of fish, the rice, (I use Nishiki) the seasoned rice vinegar and the Yaki Nori (seaweed). Since I am not a sushi chef, my sushi won't win any art contests but it tastes just fine. Everything needed to make sushi can be found in the Asian section of any local grocery store. I recommend using wild caught salmon, ahi tuna and red snapper for those who aren't familiar with different types of sushi. Its an easy place to start and the results are surprisingly impressive. I guarantee if you tell someone you make sushi, you are going to astound them. Vegetables also go very well in sushi rolls if you are feeling timid about eating or feeding raw fish to your children.
A rice cooker can be used but is not neccessary. I use a pot for my rice and it works just fine.

Dinner and NyQuil

Willie and I both have a cold and we aren't great company tonight. I wanted to make an easy dinner with little fuss. Spaghetti is a favorite in our house and I have the routine down. It's too bad that neither Willie nor I could taste it. I used two boxes of noodles at $1.39 a box, one large can of diced tomatoes at $1.19 and one large can of tomato paste at ninety nine cents. The sauce can be thinned to taste by adding water. The ground beef came from Montana as part of a gift package from my mother-in law. The bell peppers and fresh tomatoes came from our garden. The accompanying dinner salad came completely from my garden with lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes and carrots. I added some left over salmon for extra nutrients.

Sometimes as a parent of an autistic child with ADHD I have to remind myself that no matter how I feel I have to be patient with my son. Tonight was no exception. Kenny was asking question after question about where the vegetables came from, whether the meat was beef or buffalo, and what could he do to learn how to cook like me. The impatient part of me wanted him to go somewhere else and play but the proud mother in me was thrilled with his attempts to socialize and learn. At times it is hard to deal with the constant talking and yet I am so fortunate that he is so advanced. All I wanted to do was take some NyQuil and go to bed but I needed to take time out to hear him and respond first. Now that dinner is over though, Mr. NyQuil and I have a date!

Weekend Vacation

Everyone knows that on vacation, food costs can quickly spiral out of control. Even a short vacation can wreak havoc on a family's food budget. Willie and I decided last Thursday to pack the children and the dogs into the car and drive to Grandpa's house. We wanted to beat the holiday traffic so we left Thursday evening and made the 200 mile drive while it was nice and cool. With my dad living so far away I don't get to see him as often as I like. We like going to grandpa's house because it is so close to the Colorado river, without the cost of a motel. Grandma arrived on Friday afternoon and the children were thrilled to see her. Staying with Grandpa has other perks as well, especially the use of a kitchen. A quick trip to the grocery store and we were set for the weekend. I figure that if we were at home, we would pay for the cost of feeding our family, so while we were visiting it wouldn't be fair to add the strain of six extra people to my parents budget. Of course my father, being the twisted prankster that he is decided to tell my mother that he paid for the groceries using their utility bill money. After over thirty years of marriage, my mother should know not to believe my father until she has verified his story with at least two other sources. I say two because we all have a habit of messing with each other. It must be genetic. The groceries for the holiday weekend to feed four adults and four children cost us about eighty dollars and included enough food for my parents to eat for the rest of the week. Compare that to the cost of feeding eight people, three meals a day for three days at restaurants and you can imagine the difference in cost.

A few tips to remember when on vacation.

Pack an ice chest with food and drinks. It is more cost effective than a fast food drive-thru window and saves travel time as well.
Flavored bottled water has less sugar than sodas and cost less too.
Food like barbecued chicken can be prepared at home and eaten cold while at a beach, lake or picnic spot.
Packages of chicken legs and thighs are cheaper than steak or chicken breasts and they make great finger food.
A loaf of bread and a package of lunch meat can be assembled into sandwiches just about anywhere. Four dollars to feed an entire family instead of forty dollars at even the cheapest fast food restaurant is always a bargain and you don't have to remember eight different orders while children are yelling in the back seat.
Buy a large bag of chips or cookies and divide them into snack-sized sandwich bags instead of purchasing individual packages of snacks for each child. One large package for three dollars is better than eight small packages for a dollar each
Always make sure that you apply sunscreen. Reapply sunscreen after swimming because a liquid based cream cannot truly be waterproof, as my face and shoulders will certainly prove.

Now that our family is home from our mini vacation, I think I need to take a vacation of my own to recover. A book and a bath will have to suffice. What I wouldn't give for a tamper proof lock on the bathroom door and a mute button for the family.