Homemade Yogurt

Over the past few months I've become a little obsessed with starting to feed my family better (or at least more whole) food. We are still not good at this, but I'm taking baby steps. On Sunday and Monday I made two big batches of homemade chicken stock, to be added to recipes instead of using bouillon or canned stock. I froze a total of 10 cups (in 2 cup increments) and still have nearly a quart in the fridge to become soup.

I've been using Kitchen Stewardship's* list of baby steps to get started. We're working on getting all of the artificial sweeteners out of the house, and already avoided trans fats (step 1). We already use full fat dairy for everything except milk, and we tend to cook in either butter or olive oil already, though I'm curious about coconut oil (step 2). Sometimes I meal plan (step 3), and when I do, we eat really well, at home, for weeks on end. When I don't, we tend to grab more fast food and eat at restaurants more often, which is harder on our budget as well as our bodies. Meal planning also gives me structure enough to plan my coupon shopping, though I have made it to Aldi on a couple of occasions recently.

And step 4** was homemade yogurt. I first made it a couple weeks ago, just a half gallon to try it, in two quart sized containers. I had half a 32-oz container of Stonyfield organic plain yogurt in the fridge at the time (I'd gone through two of them already just "making sure" that I wanted to eat plain yogurt, and I did!), but I wanted fresh cultures (without possible contamination) so I bought a small plain Greek yogurt. Nobody had plain yogurt in small containers except one brand of Greek. What I am trying to say is that I had a lot of yogurt in my fridge at the end of this, which is why it lasted me two whole weeks. I suspect I'll go through a half gallon a week when I get going with this.

I eat my yogurt with granola or muesli, or just plain uncooked rolled oats with some dried or fresh fruit. If I'm doing that, I tend to sweeten the yogurt slightly with either brown sugar or honey, or (my new favorite) a spoonful of my homemade jam. I cannot wait to see how it is with my apple butter. Anyhow, I try to mix equal parts yogurt and other stuff because I like crunchy in every bite. It's more like eating cereal with yogurt instead of the milk rather than eating yogurt topped with a little granola. I was pleasantly surprised that the homemade yogurt had a much less tart taste to it compared to commercial yogurt, probably partially because I let the temp get nice and low and only cultured it for six hours.

Granola + Yogurt + Raspberry Jam = ...

Pink Yumminess!***

I didn't use the Kitchen Stewardship recipe, because at first I thought I'd be lazy about it and do it in the crock pot, so I clicked her link to Heartland Renaissance**** and saw that she's got a slightly better (non crock pot) method. It involves more dishes than the KS recipe, but I don't really mind that as I own a dishwasher. It also uses the oven to sterilize the jars and to incubate the yogurt, which is perfect for me! I was afraid of using the cooler-with-a-pot-of-boiling-water incubation method used by KS because I was sure Sam would mess with it. I use the bread stone and a big cast iron griddle in there with it to help hold the temp. I've been yogurt making on Tuesdays so that I don't mind not using the oven for dinner, because we eat bag lunches at class rather than eating at home.

Supplies (not pictured: large dishrags, one canning ring, a funnel, a small spoon and a large ladle.)

Jars in the oven with the bread stone, the cast iron griddle, and a pan I use for steam when I bake bread.

This time, I accidentally let the milk get a little too hot, and I was just praying it didn't curdle. It foamed up but I caught it pretty quickly when it happened and took it off the heat. My least favorite part of the process is waiting for the milk to cool.

Hot milk!

Anyhow. It eventually got cool to 110 degrees. I'd saved a small jar of culture from when I opened my last jar of homemade yogurt over the weekend, so I was pretty certain that was not contaminated and still contained active cultures. I mixed the now room temperature starter with a couple scoops of warm milk until it got smooth. Then I stirred that into the pot. I was careful not to disturb the bottom of the pan while I was stirring, and I was glad when I poured the warm milk/culture mixture into the jars. Anything that curdled or burned stayed in the pan.

Measured culture starter

Well blended with some warm milk

Blended with all of the warm milk, ready to grow cultures

In the jars!

Aftermath in the stock pot

Then I put the filled jars back in the oven, wrapped them in large thick dish towels, and left it to sit until we got home from class. Start to finish, including waiting time, it took about 2.5 hours to make and then sat for 7-ish. The bulk of the 2.5 hours was spent writing this post (and yesterday's), setting timers to recheck the thermometer, and scooping off skin from the hot milk, and doing whatever. About 10-15 minutes was actual active "doing" stuff, and that only took as long as it did because I was taking pictures.

Wrapped up all cozy!

Last night when we got back from class, I put the lids and rings on the jars and popped them in the fridge. This morning, I had yummy yogurt to eat!

Finished product, moment of truth

It's set! Yay!

Check that out. It's even thicker than the last time I made it.

That's it. I just ate a delicious breakfast of dry rolled oats in homemade yogurt with raisins and a little brown sugar. Since the yogurt is unsweetened I can use it in recipes to replace sour cream or buttermilk, and if I wanted to I could strain it to make it an even thicker Greek style yogurt or even yogurt cheese (to be used like cream cheese). Two ingredients, a few pieces of equipment I already had on hand (I only had to buy the candy thermometer, and needed one anyway), and voila. I'll say it now: this is even easier than baking that artisan bread. If I weren't home during the day, I'd have done the milk heating and cooling in the evening and then let it sit overnight. You can also let it sit up to 24 hours if you want it to be very easily digestible (the cultures eat all of the lactose), so yeah. I think the only way to screw this up would be if you didn't properly sterilize your jars, or you didn't let the milk get cool enough not to kill the cultures. Before, I was paying $3.50 for 32 ounces of whole milk yogurt, organic because that's the only way I could get the full fat version. Now I paid $1.79 for twice that, made with conventional milk and cultures I already had.

*I'm not a fan of her politics/theology in general, but food-wise she's got some interesting ideas (and fantastic recipes.) I tend to take it all with a very large grain of salt.
**We've done parts of steps 5-10 as well, but I don't need to detail them here.
***Those are flaxseeds, not raspberry seeds. It's Simply Balanced Honey Almond Flax Granola, homemade yogurt, and homemade jam.
****I really haven't read much of her stuff other than this one recipe, so forgive me if she's some sort of weirdo. The recipe works, though!

Thinking about blogging, and crocheting, and motivation

I've come out of my early-fall fog a little bit, so I think I might be ready to start blogging again. We'll see how that goes. With the cooler weather, Sam's not escaping the house as much any more, so I'm less stressed out about that. Our family just got over a bad stomach bug, so I'm still a little slow on the cooking. Today I'm making homemade yogurt and taking pictures of the process. I'll post about it tomorrow, including the recipe.

So I looked back over what I was doing at this time last year, and my gosh, I was stitching up a storm. Anything to keep my hands busy. I stayed that way until Sam started preschool in April. I suspect that that was my way of dealing with Sam's autism diagnosis. It was something that we'd sort of known was coming since the summer prior, but hadn't really processed (and let's be honest, we probably never will, completely.) Doing this blog, and making all that stuff, kept my mind on other things than the elephant in the room. Working (caring for Maggie) was much the same. But eventually there was a breaking point where our family as a whole had to accept and embrace Sam's diagnosis for what it was, and begin the hard work of giving him the best start we possibly can.

I thought I knew Sam a year ago. I knew what he did, sure. I knew every detail about how he did things, and what he was saying, and I normally knew exactly what he wanted or what was wrong. But I didn't know why he needed to bundle objects and hum, or memorize letters and numbers. I might have had some clue about his triggers, but the need he was fulfilling with his behaviors wasn't even on my radar. "Yeah, he does that a lot," was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea how much visual and auditory stimulation he craved. I had no idea how badly he wanted to make music. I had no idea why he craved certain motions and not others.

In the big picture, of course we don't know why he has certain sensory needs, but we have learned a ton about how he meets them. Most of the time, I can redirect his humming to singing, and his bundling can be done in a way that's safe for everyone. Food is still something we're working on. I have a feeling it'll be a long process. He drinks milk and eats chicken, so between those and all the junk food, he's growing and reasonably healthy.

Anyway. I'm not going to set a schedule for updating this blog because I don't want to use it as an escape as much. I'll update when I have something to say. We're finally done with most of our classes, the exception being three more weeks of More Than Words, which we have tonight. Sam got pretty bored over Thanksgiving break, so he's pretty happy to be back in school. We put up our sad little tree yesterday with only one ornament--a star that I crocheted at the top. I'm debating about bringing the big one out for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but for now, this is what we can handle. It's a little Charlie Brown, but it works.

This morning at the park (well, not *this* morning...months ago)

[Another post left unfinished from July.]

Today was day 1 of Transportation Week at Sam & Mommy's preschool. Last week was Farm Week, and I'll be sharing more about that in another post. [Actually, I probably won't. I was over-ambitious, we went to the library, farmer's market, and zoo, and I already posted the pics on Facebook.] But this morning we tried the library again, where Sam got into trouble for grabbing a little girl's arm to either take a letter magnet away from her or move her away from the magnet board, I am not sure. He had the same tantrum as the last time trying to leave, but I managed to get us out of there with a book about trains and a book about fire engines.

 The plane

The bench and sticks.

Then we went to Aronson Park in Lakeville, where there is a veterans' memorial with an old air force plane on display. I posted a couple of pictures to Facebook toward the beginning of our visit, but my attitude at the time wasn't great. Both were taken from the same vantage point, standing near the bench that faced the playground. My caption was, "Sam was generally traumatized by the size of this small plane...but he did say 'ay-pane' in passing a few times while playing with sticks on a concrete slab by a bench." 

He doesn't really do it right, but he likes it.

What I didn't post was that he later explored the playground equipment, examining the rocker, climbing the steps up to where there was a steering wheel, which he pretended to drive, and went down one of the taller slides once. He then took off across a grassy field, but not in the direction of the road, and turned around to see that I was following him several times, plus he came running back to me when I crouched down in the "come hug me" position with arms outstretched, after I yelled his name. He agreed to hold my hand and walk back to the bench to get Scout, and was happy to go back to the van with me after I counted backwards from 5.

These are little accomplishments, and things that I ought to be embarrassed to be proud of a 3 year old doing, but for Sam, they are progress. It just reinforces to me that I need to get back into a parenting support group again. We got the ECFE catalog for fall, and once again, the special needs class is only 6 sessions long while all the other classes are 12 or even 13 sessions long. It's not fair to make us wait until MEA to start class and finish around Thanksgiving when everyone else starts in September and goes through Christmastime. I want to sign up for a regular class, but I don't know if that will be useful for us or not at this point. It will all depend on what time Sam goes to school in the fall anyway.

[He went in the mornings, and as I wrote yesterday, I signed up for two classes in addition to ECFE. We're going to be plenty busy. Also, he's gotten accustomed to leaving the house at least once between noon and six pm. So I have that block of time daily, that I have to fill somehow, if anyone wants to have a playdate. Sam also has all day off tomorrow. He's also come a long way speech-wise since I wrote this--he's saying at least one real sentence a day. Yesterday it was "It got wet," after he spilled a cup of watery pop with melted ice all over himself in the car, and I asked "What happened?"]

More Than Words

This fall is shaping up to be the fall of classes. Mondays Sam and I are taking Music Together, and soon enough our ECFE class will begin on Wednesday nights. (Next week, finally.)  But last night I attended an orientation for a class offered by Sam's speech therapist and her sister, also part of the early childhood special ed program in our district. They received a substantial grant from the state, and last winter were able to attend a weeklong training in Florida to be able to teach this class. Due to the grant, they are also able to offer this class free of charge for eight families at a time. Last night I sat in a room with those parents, some of whom have children in class with Sam every morning.

More Than Words is a program that teaches parents of children with autism how to work directly with their children, in their everyday routines, to improve their communication. It meets each child where they are, whether verbal or not, and works right in with their current activities. Sam's therapist has done some of this with him in class, and he's made so much progress even with that small amount of help. Of the three classes we're going to be taking at the same time, I think this is the one that will be the most important. I've asked Dan to make it a point to leave work early to come with us, since I'll need him to be as involved as I am with the program, as he spends a majority of his time at home playing with (and feeding and bathing, etc) Sam. I just don't know if we'll get another opportunity to do something so beneficial to Sam for free again.

And now I'll leave you with the song that's going to be in my head every dang time I think about this class.

Slow-Cooker Beef Stew

This is one that's sort of what you might call "semi-homemade". It uses a seasoning packet, but I still have to chop up several vegetables and some meat, unless I bought it pre-diced (which I didn't this time). The recipe is here, or else on the back of whatever packet you buy.

Anyhow, this one is quite straightforward. You peel and chop some potatoes, carrots, celery stalks, and an onion or two. Then you chop up and add the meat. (I skipped the flour step, as the broth is plenty rich without being actual gravy.) Mix the water with the seasoning packet, dump it over the top, and stir. Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4. Bam. Tasty dinner.

Chopped veggies

And the meat

With the seasoning and water, all mixed up

Cooked down and done!

With a bread plate, that's my dinner.

You could literally eat it with a fork if you wanted to. It's basically Dinty Moore, except with flavor.

I used half a beef roast, the last one we had from our share of last year's cow. I think all we have left from the cow is the other half of the roast (destined for stroganoff, yum!), some ground beef, and a cube steak. We still have some pork spare ribs and chops, plus two ham portions and some ground pork. Overall I think we got just the right amount for what we would use.

I made a new batch of plain artisan dough and baked a boule to have with dinner and a demi-baguette for Dan to take to work today with leftovers.

I debated about chopping the rest of the vegetables for the next two batches of stew, and freezing them, since I knew they'd probably go bad in the fridge if I didn't. It didn't take long to get the veggies going this time, but I can imagine how excited I'd be to make this recipe if I just had to thaw a baggy of veggies and use store-bought stew meat, already diced. I could literally throw it together in 5 minutes. Anyhow. So I did. Two batches worth.

Tada!

Tomorrow night we are taking a class at Sam's school hosted by his speech therapist, so I plan to toss together some spaghetti with meatballs in rosa sauce when we get back from that. (Newsflash: it's half a jar of Target brand pasta sauce with a little half-and-half mixed in, and a dozen frozen meatballs. I have my nights of not-even-a-little-bit homemade, too.) I think I'm going to try to do a crock pot meal every Monday as long as we have Music Together, a reasonably quick pasta on Tuesdays, and possibly another crock pot meal Wednesdays once we start ECFE. I may need recipes. We may resort to pizza by Wednesday once we get on the classes every Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday night schedule.

Hmm. What happened there?

I honestly didn't plan to take a whole week off from blogging, but it looks like that's what happened. I'm not entirely sure where the time went, but I know I wasn't doing much different than usual. On Facebook I quit a group that was a bit toxic and joined a better one, so there were the requisite "getting to know you" posts, so that's probably where my writing energy went. I also took another weekend off from Facebook altogether for the last two days. There was cleaning, as I did keep up with my 20 minutes a day, plus laundry. We got Sam's hair cut in time for school pictures, which are tomorrow. I did some cooking but neglected to take pictures. Well, I took no pictures at all of my Chicken with Mushrooms, which was a winner; I took pictures of about 1/3 of the process for Roasted Vegetables with Sausage, but I don't plan to make that again any time soon. Today I made beef stew in the crock pot, so there will be pictures of that tomorrow. It smells amazing!

In the meantime, here are some random pictures that never made their way into posts.

Raspberry jam on the stove

Raspberry jam in the jars

The beginnings of applesauce...forgot to take any more pictures the whole time

And just a cute one of Sam waiting for the bus one day, pre-haircut.

Music Together

Sam and I recently started taking a music class for parents and young children. The first week was a "free demo" and we got a 5 song CD to take home and try out after that. He did about as well as he usually did at circle time at ECFE and had a couple of really fun moments, so I decided to take the plunge, pay the $150, and sign up for the eight week course. Monday was the first night of that. He had a pretty good time; a few little meltdowns but nothing too serious, and he really got into a few of the songs and activities. Plus, we got the 25 track CD to bring home. I had to hide his "school" CD that he's been listening to all day every day for the last few weeks, but we've been listening to the Music Together flute CD several times a day for the last few days. I think each of us has favorites. He's not as much a fan of the minor keys in general, and not much a fan at all of the non english songs. He loves playing with the small percussion instruments, and watching the hand movements. He gets a special kick out of vocal sound effects. He loves to dance when asked.

And...I've been sitting on this post for a couple days and have nothing to add at the moment. So there's that.

Sometimes I wish SAHMs could take PTO.

Yesterday morning was lovely, but my lingering sniffles/allergies are turning into a full fledged cold. Today I didn't want to do anything or go anywhere, but Sam has had other ideas. We still don't have a chain or second deadbolt on the front door (but his other two escape routes have been managed (zip-tied the gate to the deck so that it no longer swings open at all, and we keep both cars locked in the garage (with keys inaccessible)so he can't get to the garage door openers)) and he's gone outside without permission several times. Not while I'm slacking off, mind you--I'll be trying to do laundry and he'll take that exact moment to step outside. I am lucky I didn't fall as I flew down the stairs at least twice. He's also taken to leaving the driveway and getting closer and closer to the busy street, though he hasn't gotten as far as the sidewalk under my watch.
Anyhow. I haven't been cooking according to my "plan", so I haven't been writing posts about it. Last night's roasted vegetables with sausage was kind of a flop. The recipe is here, but I think it's gotten on Dan's permanent "no" list, so I probably will not make it again. If I do, it'll just be for me, and it's kind of a lot of food for one person. I meant to put away the leftovers to have for lunches this week, but the sick. I passed out and forgot. Had to throw it all out this morning...so wasteful. Which made me feel [here Sam decided to make a run for it. Again.] even crappier.
Earlier Sam dec[Here he escaped into the garage. AGAIN.]ided to go out to the garage, open our freezer (upright, not chest), take out a frozen pizza and bring it inside, insisting "Pizza! Pizza!" I guess that is what we are having for dinner tonight. Whatever. I gave him chicken nuggets in the meantime.
When I'm feeling less grouchy, I'll write about Sam's and my music class we attended last night. At the moment I guess I need to parent him. Ugh. Sigh.

After the Facebook fast

So hey, I'm finally back on Facebook! I'm still catching up, but I only had 12 notifications, half of which were for my Animal Crossing group, which I haven't read yet. I did cheat a teensy bit to respond to IMs from a friend (we were making plans) but I didn't touch my newsfeed all weekend. I'm also just calling it a Facebook/Twitter/G+ free weekend because I didn't do so well avoiding my RSS reader. I am weak, but I only messed with it once (see below.)

Things that I really, really wanted to post about and couldn't:

1. I made red raspberry jam on Friday! Nine whole jars of it plus a small tupperware that I kept in the fridge. This was my second batch of jam, as I'd made seven jars of strawberry jam earlier in the summer. I am tentatively addicted to home canning. We'll see how the next (bigger) project goes. I don't have the equipment that I need for it (a china cap/chinois sieve or else a food mill), plus I am down to three empty jars, so yeah. May have to make a trip to fleet farm. And my mom's house for more empty jars in other sizes.

2. I love good karma. Back when we were dating and then married with no kids, Dan and I used to eat at a particular Perkin's that had a claw machine near the entry. He'd sometimes play it for fun and give any toy he happened to win to a kid that happened to be there eating with their family. On Friday when Sam and I were finishing up a mid-jam Cub run, a lady walked up to us with a little stuffed dog her daughter had won in the claw machine there, and didn't want for whatever reason. So Sam has a new puppy, courtesy of nice people doing things that his dad used to do.

3. We went to Target and I chased Sam instead of Dan chasing him, and Dan pushed the cart. It turns out that Sam gets really upset when he doesn't know where Daddy is (because Sam's run off) when we are all at Target. Eventually I got tired, and we made our way to grocery where Sam usually gets a free cookie. I told Dan we were going to quid-pro-quo it to get Sam in the cart. It wasn't too easy, but he got in, and when he got his cookie and we told him to say "Thank you" to the baker, he said "Kank-oo fow da cookie!" Dan and I both lost it. Sam doesn't speak in original sentences, like, ever. So that was neat. I think they are working on those sort of things at school during snack, but still.

4. I got so, so bored by the end of the day Saturday. I'm used to spending the majority of my day reading, so without much to entertain myself, I did get a lot of housework done. Then I pulled up my phone's ereader and read the entirety of Alice in Wonderland, since I'd downloaded it (for free, hooray public domain) and hadn't actually read it. After that, I broke the rule and looked at Feedly. There were all of 12 posts, and only about 2/3 of those were ones I was going to read (the others were Pocket Your Dollars weekly shopping list posts for stores I didn't intend to visit this week.) I discovered that I get more out of my feed if I only view one category at a time, i.e. all of the comics, all of my friends' blogs, all of the parenting blogs, all of the religion blogs, all of the "other" blogs, etc. One topic at a time means that I'm less likely to skip over things that I'm not in the mood to dig into at the moment.

That's about it! I also slacked on the cooking stuff, for reasons, so I'm making my roasted vegetables with sausage tonight instead of two days ago. Will write about it for tomorrow.

What I've been up to while Sam is at school

Last night I made chili, which I've written about before, so I'm finally not writing a food post!

So, a few posts ago, I mentioned that I was considering taking a break from social media. The impetus for this was something that happened last weekend where I commented on a post before I was really awake and pissed someone off who I truly respect. I basically misquoted her and she laid the smack down promptly. I apologized immediately, but it bothered me all weekend, to the point that I couldn't calm myself down and relax at night. Rather than, you know, talking to another human being about it, I just spent even more time on the internet, looking at stupid slideshows and buzzfeed lists to try to distract myself until I got over my embarrassment/shame. Not a particularly healthy way to deal.

Which is why I'm considering taking a little time off from the internet, to consider my consumption of and interaction with online culture. I might do it on a weekend when I have the best chance of actually doing something constructive with the freed-up time. The silver lining is that while browsing said buzzfeed lists, I found this, which lead me to this. Clean your house in 20 minutes a day for 30 days? Sign me up.

I set up reminders in my calendar and started with the very next morning, which happened to be the 15th. (Rather than start at the beginning of the list, I decided to match days of the month to numbers on the list, so I can just keep doing it as time goes on.) So far, in 20 minute chunks, I've swept and tidied my living room and dining room; steam cleaned my bathroom floor, emptied all the bathroom trash and thrown out all of Sam's bath toys that had gotten mildewy; sanitized all door knobs, switch plates, phones, remote controls, keyboards and mice, and most of the video game handhelds; and yesterday I de-cluttered and swept the landing of our split-entry, cleaned out the van, and swept the front steps. Over the next four days I expect virtually my whole house to become clean enough for company to drop in out of the blue. (Day 20. Surface clean living room and kitchen, 21. Surface clean bathrooms, 22. Surface clean bedrooms, 23. Sweep and vacuum all floors in the house.) The 20 minute time limit ensures that I don't burn myself out cleaning half my day, and I still have time while Sam's away to do some reading and writing, take a shower if I need to, and get some dinner prep going.

In the past, I'd tried to do FlyLady, but it just didn't work for me. It's heavily e-mail based, and I just don't use e-mail during my day-to-day to keep track of tasks. The one big thing FlyLady did for me was point me toward Cozi--my Cozi homepage is actually FlyLady themed since that's how I found it. All of my menu planning, shopping/to-do listing, and chore scheduling, well, really all of my scheduling is done in the Cozi app or the website now. Last fall and winter I kept up with some of the main themes of what the FlyLady group was up to, especially the monthly habits. This month's habit is a before bed routine, which has been easy for me to forget or just not do because I'm tired.

Tonight I'm making zucchini pasta, but this weekend I'll be making roasted vegetables with sausage and hopefully chicken with mushrooms, if I get to it. I'm going to try to limit my online time to writing drafts here, and keeping track of things in Cozi, from the moment I wake up Saturday until the moment I wake up Monday. Wish me luck.

Teriyaki Pork Lo Mein

As promised, I made a meal that contained a noodle packet. It was one of those of 10/$10 deals where you also get a rotisserie chicken for 99¢. Well, at least it was the first time I made it. It's been so long since I first made this recipe that it's no longer the one on the back of the bag when you buy it, so I had to look it up online. If they ever discontinue the noodle packet, I may have to learn how to make lo mein from scratch.

Basically the whole recipe is the standard noodle packet with the addition of some sliced pork loin, a red bell pepper, and some garlic.

As far as pre-prep, I just very thinly sliced the bell pepper, about 1/4"x1", a little bigger than matchstick sized pieces. I thawed the boneless pork loin chips in the fridge, but they were still a little too frozen in the afternoon for me to want to pre-slice them.

Pretty pepper

When I eventually cut the pork chops into bits, I decided to make small cubes instead of longer slices. It would be delicious either way, and longer, thinner slices work better with chopsticks in my opinion.

Here's the meat starting to cook

Cooked through and set aside

Tossed in soy sauce

Stir-frying

Added the garlic, noodle packet, and water

Noodles mostly cooked

Added the pork back in

Tada

I called Dan and had him pick up some egg rolls and cream cheese wontons from our local restaurant because I hadn't bought any frozen ones, and I didn't want to run the oven anyway. That added a few extra dollars to what would have otherwise been a very inexpensive meal.

A couple of little prep notes I didn't include above: I love using the same container I plan to serve the main dish in, when I need to set aside fully cooked meat. I did the same with the fajitas the other night, but I didn't end up taking a picture of the serving dish in the end. It saves a dish and warms the serving dish so that your food stays hotter longer. 

Also, slotted spoons in various sizes and materials are a god-send for these sort of "remove meat from pan for a minute, but don't remove the oil from the pan when you do it" sort of recipes. I have a very nice metal one that I use for serving certain foods, once they are out of the nonstick pans. I have a nice wide plastic one and a more ladle-shaped plastic one that I like to use to move food out of the nonstick pans into other containers. I used the ladle one to put the pork back in the pan without bringing too much of the soy sauce with it, to reduce the overall sodium content. If I were feeling lazy, I might just have dumped the whole container back in the pan, but it's nice to have an easy way to not do that.

This morning I started some crock pot chili, which I've written about before here, so tomorrow's post may be less about food and more about life. Sam and I are starting to get into a groove with our school routine, and he is actually going to bed at a more reasonable hour (9:30 pm, which, trust me, is early for him), and I've been making use of my mornings alone.

Garlic lime chicken fajitas

Last night was fajitas night. All summer more or less I've alternated tacos and fajitas on Tuesday nights, as we are fans of tortillas filled with delicious things. Even Sam will eat a quesadilla, or he'll just bring me the bag of tortillas and say "Dee ahh?" By which he means, give me a tortilla and I will eat it plain as though it were a large cookie.

In the past I've used store bought seasoning packets, but one time I decided to go halfway from scratch by getting one of those recipe cards with pre-measured spices that McCormick makes. By the way, I think that's a genius marketing idea. Rather than hesitating to buy a whole container of a spice you're not sure you'll ever use again, you can try the recipe once and then buy more spices if it's a hit. Or you can just keep buying the cards, but I suspect there is a significant markup.

Looks yummy!

To start, I sliced up my onion and green pepper. Here are some pictures of that.

Onion in half

Sliced thinly lengthwise and then crosswise just the once

Top chopped off the pepper, seeds removed, and membranes pinched away as much as possible

Sliced down the membranes to make them easier to remove

Cleaned up one segment

Long thin slices

Then I mixed my marinade. Here are all the spices and liquids that went into that.

Yes, it's kind of a lot of stuff. 

Which means it's a good thing I can save by buying in bulk some of the time.

One thing I changed per our tastes was that I halved the amounts of citrus juices and added tap water to replace the missing liquid. (2 tbsp lime juice + 2 tbsp orange juice + 1/4 cup water, instead of 1/4 cup lime + 1/4 cup orange.) As-is it was a little too citrusy for Dan.

The prepared marinade!

Then I put everything in the fridge until it was time to cook. About half an hour before I expected Dan to come home, I defrosted three boneless skinless chicken breasts in the microwave. Just as it dinged that they were defrosted, I heard the garage door open. (He'd called, but my phone was charging upstairs, and I was downstairs at the time watching Guess With Jess with Sam, so I didn't hear it.) So he walked in to me cutting up chicken, which was preferable to not having started anything at all, I suppose. The recipe calls for a 30 minute marinade, but I set a timer for 20 minutes instead this time.

Thinly sliced chicken in a freezer bag

1/4 cup of marinade reserved, the rest in the baggy with the chicken

I do prefer to marinate in a plastic bag, especially with meat. You can really squish it around and get everything coated without making a big mess, which I always seem to do when I try to marinate meat in a bowl, using a spoon to distribute the marinade.

After 20 minutes, I pulled it out and cooked it in my big skillet.

Starting to cook

Cooked through and set aside

Once the chicken was all the way cooked through, it was time to pull it out while I cooked the onion and bell pepper in the remaining marinade. Once they in turn were finished, I put the chicken back in and cooked until it was all hot and steamy. 

Onion and pepper starting to cook

Just about finished

Confession time: I just about burned it all at this point. I was trying to get a quesadilla cooked for Sam (pro-tip from Dan: use a pizza cutter to slice up a quesadilla), get the table set including toppings, and warm up cheese sauces for Dan and myself. Somewhere in here Sam politely asked for a glass of milk, so of course I had to drop everything and get it for him. :) The nice part is that the onion and pepper are a little bit tastier if they caramelize a little in the pan. So it all worked out. Dan said that this was the best batch of fajitas I've made yet, so WIN.

Finished product, drenched in dairy products the way I like it

I can't really even begin to estimate the cost of this particular meal, as I had most of the ingredients on hand already, aside from the onion and pepper. I would guess that it's more expensive than spaghetti but much less expensive than a roast, especially if you get the chicken, tortillas, and veggies on sale. It still feeds both of us for less than you'd pay for one person to order fajitas from a restaurant.

Tonight will be only slightly more homemade than hamburger helper, but it's one of our favorites and it uses some fresh ingredients, so I'll still write about it. Teriyaki pork lo mein using a Knorr noodle packet, and the recipe on the back.