CheapFoodHere » Cheap Recipes

Carrot Pesto Cucumber Boats

CheapFoodHere — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Cheap, Healthy Snack Recipe for Your Next Party

Dishes are just a bit fancier when they have an edible vessel. Take stuffed peppers, stuffed mushrooms, quinoa salad in an acorn squash, taco salads in a tortilla shell bowl, etc. This recipe is no exception and up to this point I hadn’t ever used a cucumber as a vessel for a recipe, but it works great.

One of the ways that you can significantly reduce your food budget is to make your own snacks. We’ve featured a few recipes already (Homemade Crackers with Sage and Cayenne, Olive Oil and Sea Salt crackers, Flatbread with Garbanzo Flour) that keep you out of the cookie/cracker/chip aisle at the grocery store where we know a TON of money is spent and you stray the most from your grocery list. It’s a whole lot of cravings and eye candy there, so best to stay away.

We decided to find a healthy snack that would work for a family or to bring to a dinner party/tailgate that was more creative than chips and dip, wings or sandwiches. So, we tweaked a pesto and hummus recipe to include carrots instead of the beans and unsalted mixed nuts instead of pine nuts, since we’re trying to cut down the cost. Here’s the recipe:

Carrot Pesto Cucumber Boats

Ingredients

2 Large Cucumbers
1 Large Carrot
2 Small Garlic cloves
10 Fresh Basil Leaves
1/8 Cup of EVOO
1/2 Cup of Unsalted Mixed Nuts
1 Tbsp Toasted Sesame Seeds
Sea Salt and Pepper to Taste

Directions

In a blender or food processor, place carrots, garlic, basil, olive oil and mixed nuts.

Blend until smooth, stopping to push mix down with a spatula.

Peel strips off of the cucumber skin and cut off the ends.

Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds with a spoon.

Scoop filling into the cucumber boats and slice into 1.5″ pieces.

Sprinkle generously with sesame seeds and serve immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

Guest Post – Fresh From the Farm to Your Table

CheapFoodHere — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:35:25 +0000

Costa Rica Family Farmed Organic Food…Comida Organica Express Delivers Puerto Viejo To Limon

It has been a life changing journey driven by the desire for a better, sustainable lifestyle. It has been an adventure of seven years leading my wife and I to life on a jungle farm on Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast and inspiring us to gather and organize organic family farmers from various regions of the country. The result has been a beautiful organization which can deliver (within reasonable time) exceptional organic quality goodies at family prices anywhere from Talamanca to Limon with delivery coming soon to the San Jose Metro area.

My wife’s name is Mileidy and mine Carlos. She was born here in Costa Rica, I was born in New Jersey. Since we met, our dream has been to live on a farm harvesting food free of chemicals and transgenic mutations. After achieving this step we expanded our vision to include helping others through education, example and networking on how to create a more sustainable lifestyle for themselves and their families.

We grow and sell organic food because we LOVE IT, it is good for others and it allows us to keep growing in our vision. We do it with the idea of infecting YOU with a ferocious appetite for a healthier way of life! By working with our facilitators and service providers to keep costs down and quality high our clients receive the crème-de-la-crème when it comes to real natural selections and price. Our menu offers true family farmed organic fruits, vegetables, spices and hand-made vegan pasta to those who seek to express their consciousness in their food choices.

We currently work with several farms and artisans but most of our goods come from five different family run farms. Each is located in different regions of the country, one of them is located over 2,175 meters above sea level. One family farm is less than two acres in size and produces several thousand pounds of food per year! On our farm Milly started her own cross-strain of tomatoes to get a natural, delicious tomato growing in the Caribbean. While one of neighbors was the first to produce organic lettuce in the Caribbean with little to no bitter aftertaste.

Our menu is updated week to week to reflect the changes in what is available and what has come into season. We offer everything from organic Strawberries, to Bok Choy, Fennel, Kale, Onions, Lettuce, Eggplant, Peruvian Potatoes, Blackberries, Arugula, Basil, Rosemary, Oregano, a variety of Tomatoes and so much much more… You can see pictures and download a copy of the full menu right from our website at www.ComidaOrganicaExpress.com

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and letting us share a little bit about ourselves with you. If you have any questions about organic farming or sustainable living please feel free to email us at organicdeliverycr [at] gmail dot com. And remember you can start a garden or plant some veggies in almost any space, go out there and reclaim your table! Thanks again!

All the Best,
~Carlos&Milly
ComidaOrganicaExpress

Acorn Squash with Pear and Quinoa Salad

CheapFoodHere — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Acorn Squash, Pear & Quinoa make a perfect fall recipe

Let me just start out by saying this is a breakthrough recipe. It stands far and away from most recipes I’ve discovered or created. Bravo to Sprouted Kitchen and thanks for sharing this with the world initially.

Hard squash isn’t something I’ve cooked with on a regular basis or explored really at all. Outside of yellow squash, zucchini and the occasional pumpkin, I’m kind of a squash virgin. This recipe actually called for a Kabocha squash but without really knowing what that was, I reached for the most similar looking one, an acorn squash. It turns out they are very closely related, but the Kabocha is from Japan originally.

I can’t argue with anyone that fall is the time to explore cooking with squash since you can’t walk down an aisle at the farmer’s market or in the produce department without seeing a literal cornucopia of them on display. The acorn squash is especially hard, making it almost impossible to cut into and imagining eating one. But, baked in the oven for a good 30-45 minutes and they soften right up. The seeds are just like those from it’s close cousin the pumpkin, which you can bake too. That is my absolute favorite part about Halloween, so, of course, after cutting the acorn squash in half I scooped out the seeds, cleaned them off, threw them on a cookie sheet with some Old Bay Seasoning and baked them to a crisp. Just a little bonus to recipes with acorn squash.

The way this recipe is put together with contrasting and complimentary flavors is brilliant. There is a tang in the lemon juice and sweetness of the pear that jumps right out with the squash, shallot and cardamom. In my case I used Garam Masala seasoning which is heavy on the cardamom, but also has some other Indian spices in there to bounce off the other flavors. I won’t keep you from the recipe any longer (if you haven’t already skipped down to it). Here it is, with a slight variation from the original:

Acorn Squash with Pear and Quinoa Salad

Ingredients

1 Acorn Squash
3 tbsp. Fall Seasonal Honey
2 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1 Cup cooked Quinoa
1 tsp. Garam Masala seasoning
1 Shallot, Minced
1 Hard Pear, peeled, cored and diced
1/3 Cup Basil, Chopped
3 Tbsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 Cup Baby Spinach
Salt and Fresh Pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Slice Acorn squash in half, scoop out the seeds and brush with a mixture of 2 Tbsp honey and 1 Tbsp olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 20 minutes, flesh side down. Flip and bake for another 20 minutes or until golden and soft.

Meanwhile, prepare the salad. In a small mixing bowl combine the cooked but cool Quinoa, spinach, shallots and diced pear. Toss with basil, shallot, Garam Masala, lemon juice, remaining olive oil and honey. Mix well.

Once the squash is done baking, remove it from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
Place squash halves on plates and fill with Quinoa salad mix.

Serve immediately.

Flatbread with Garbanzo and Fava Flour

CheapFoodHere — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Low Carb Snacks Using Garbanzo Flour

You may have noticed with some of our low carb recipe posts that we were on the 4 Hour Body diet for about two months playing around with recipes and trying to get more fit. We love the idea of low carb and cutting out wheat/gluten specifically so we started experimenting with bean flours. At the onset of our curiosity we were still living in Costa Rica where you couldn’t find bean flouers at all and I suspect if they did have them they would be cost-prohibitive (think $10 per bag of flour), but I was told you could grind your own dried garbanzo beans into a flour if you had a strong food processor or coffee grinder. I looked up a few how-tos on the Internet and just decided to go for it. Dried garbanzos are cheap in Costa Rica, so if I screwed it up it would be no big deal.

Here’s how the process went for grinding chick peas into flour:

The decibel level of sound coming from my food processor was something I’d never heard before. I know dried chick peas are hard, but these little suckers hit the side of the food processor off the blade at a blazing speed and it took a good 5 minutes to pulverize them into a flour. I had to do them in 30 to 45 second bursts because I could feel how hot the plastic and the machine were getting during the process. Overall, if you could choose between making your own garbanzo flour and buying a bag already made, I would suggest skipping the hassle and buying the pre-ground beans. I haven’t ground the beans myself since this initial try. It was just too loud and too much work for me and my food processor.

The first recipe I used the homemade garbanzo flour for was a thick flatbread, which was more like a pancake batter than a cracker. I roughly followed this recipe from Dining and Wine section of the NYTimes. Here’s how my cheap food here version of skillet garbanzo flatbread recipe went:

Skillet Flatbread with Garbanzo Flour

Ingredients

1 Cup Garbanzo flour
2 Cups of Water
2 Tbsp plus 1 extra Tbsp Olive Oil
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 Tbsp mix dried herbs and spices (rosemary, basil, oregano, cayenne, etc)
1/2 tsp Sea Salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Pour 2 Tbsp olive oil into the pan and coat the bottom. Place into the oven while pre-heating.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, pour garbanzo flour, baking powder, spices and salt. With a whisk, mix well.
Add the additional 1 TBSP of olive oil to the dry mixture and blend in.

Pour in the water and whisk until well-blended. Allow batter to sit for up to 12 hours or use immediately, whisking just before pouring into the hot skillet.

Pour into preheated skillet and bake for 30-40 minutes until the edges are browned and pulling away from the sides of the skillet.

Cool for 10 minutes, cut and serve with butter or seasoned olive oil.

A More Sophisticated Garbanzo Flatbread

After the first attempt at the flatbread we were hooked. It was a copy-cat of the delicious bready carbs we were missing, but without the carbs. Genius! So, once we moved back to the US and landed ourselves in St. Petersburg, FL and could find all kinds of bean flours, I began my next adventure. We settled on the Garbanzo and Fava bean flour made by Bob’s Red Mill in the Gluten-Free section of the grocery store. We are still learning how to properly use these bean flours and haven’t used any gums yet to help bind the flour at this point so bear with us here. The next garbanzo flatbread recipe to come out went like this (adapted from our foodie friend at Smitten Kitchen):

Garbanzo and Fava Flatbread Recipe

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups garbanzo and fava bean flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp table salt
1/2 Cup water
1/3 Cup olive oil
Approx 1/4 cup honey
3/4 Cup shredded Asiago cheese
1 Tbsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
Approx 1 Tbsp Coarse sea salt

Directions

Preheat oven with pizza stone to 450 for 30 minutes
Pour the garbanzo and fava flour into a medium-sized bowl and mix with the baking powder and salt.

Make a well in the center and pour in the olive oil and water.

Mix with a wooden spoon until it is well-integrated and then knead onto a clean work surface 4 or 5 times. The dough should feel oily, but to keep it from sticking to the work surface, sprinkle extra garbanzo flour on the rolling pin, dough and work surface.

Divide the dough into four pieces.

Roll the dough out into long, irregular shapes onto parchment papaer. There’s no need to be precise here just flatten out the dough to about 1/8″ thick.

Baste with extra olive oil and gently press the thyme into the dough so it sticks into it. Stab several times with a fork and sprinkle lightly with sea salt and Asiago cheese. Bake for 5 minutes or until it’s golden brown.

Drizzle lightly with honey and cut into pieces.

Devour.

This round of flatbread was to die for! I’m super happy with the way they came out and did devour all but the 4th batch of flatbreads we made that night, and they only lasted until the morning the following day. But don’t worry, we’ll be making more. I hope you try this recipe out and don’t be afraid of the bean flour, everything turns out okay in the end. Plus, this is an extremely low carb snack if you leave off the honey.

World’s Best Black Bean Veggie Burger

CheapFoodHere — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0000

The Search for the Best Black Bean Burger Concludes

Cheap Food Here has been on the hunt for the perfect black bean burger recipe ever since eating at the Original Penguin restaurant in Charlotte, NC (I say ‘Original’ because there was an issue with the original owners of the brand who were leasing it to the ones running the restaurant and to make a long story short, management changed, the charm and delicious food was downgraded to less than mediocre and thus, I wouldn’t guarantee the new Penguin black bean burger is the same as it was. See newer reviews here.) who could tout the most fabulous bean burger on the planet. Having eaten it a few times and trying to dissect it before inhaling it, I decided it probably had black beans (duh!), mushrooms, beets (this was an educated guess because of the color) and some kind of chili pepper in it because they packed some heat. Plus, I have a suspicion that the patties were deep fried because they were crispy on the outside and no matter what I’ve tried in the past, they just never get crispy in the pan, on the grill or in the broiler.

I’ve tried plenty of recipes, some with eggs, some with bread crumbs some with Portobello mushrooms; the list goes on and on. They’ve all been edible, but nothing was even coming close to the coveted Penguin black bean burger. The black bean burgers that I was making were mostly mushy and couldn’t be flipped without them falling completely apart, which I tried to remedy in every way I knew how. Nothing seemed to work and now I’m convinced it was two things: the lack of a filler like rice and leaving the black beans course rather than completely mashed. This speculation was confirmed after finding BrownEyedBaker’s black bean veggie burger recipe.

I do believe the best part about a meal is having leftovers that taste as good, if not better, than the original meal and these black bean burgers have that exact promise (hello freezer meal!). After I pattied them all out, we only cooked two for each of us so that left us with four more leftover (this recipe makes a total of 8 black bean burgers). With the extra patties, before cooking them, I placed them on a plate with parchment paper and froze them. Once they were frozen (2-3 hours) I transferred them to a freezer storage bag and we just thawed them out and cooked them the next time we were ready for them (only a few days later because we just absolutely loved them).

These hearty, full, nutritious black bean veggie burgers are one-of-a-kind and this recipe has me thinking about a ton of other bean burgers we can create off of this base. I’m thinking lentil patties and garbanzo burgers just off the top of my head. I think it’s time for a bean burger series. Okay, so here is our rendition of the famed recipe:

Black Bean Burger Recipe Ingredients

2 tsp grapeseed oil (or other saute oil)
1 cup roughly chopped yellow onion
4 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup coarsely grated carrots
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
3 C. cooked black beans, rinse and drained (we used dried bean to cut down on cost, but canned works also)
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp minced fresh parsley
1½ cups cooked brown rice
1 cup chopped cremini mushrooms
Salt and black pepper, to taste
1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper (adjust to desired heat level)
1 Tbsp additional grapeseed oil

Black Bean Burger Recipe Directions

In a large skillet heated to medium-high heat, add the grapeseed oil and allow to heat up for 1-2 minutes.

Add the onion and garlic and cook for 3-5 minutes until translucent, but not brown. Turn the burner off.

Add the grated carrots, chili powder and cumin and cook for 5 minutes on risidual heat, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl combine the black beans, mustard, soy sauce, ketchup and parsley.

Mash together with a potato masher or your hands, making sure not to over work the mixture. Lumpy is good.

Stir in the cooled onion and carrot mixture. Add the cooked brown rice and chopped mushrooms, stirring to combine. Season with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper.
Form 8 patties and make sure to press the edges to make a clean edge so the form holds during cooking.
Heat the remaining grapeseed oil in a large, nonstick skillet on medium-high heat. Add the burgers and cook for 5 to 8 minutes per side turning only once, very carefully (reshaping them after the flip if needed).
Remove from heat and enjoy on a bun or simply by itself with a fork!

Cheap Dinner Recipe – Homemade Shepherd’s Pie

CheapFoodHere — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Homemade Shepherd’s Pie: An English Tradition

Shepherd’s pie is often the topic of debate by those who argue whether it was originally made using lamb (mutton) or beef. It would make sense that it started as a lamb dish since that’s the basis of the name, but I don’t believe I trust any web source to know the absolute truth. Certainly not Wikipedia, however, according to them, the name ‘shepherd’ didn’t come into the mix until about 80 years after the name ‘Cottage Pie’ was used. Whatever origin or name you want to give it, you can put ‘delicious’ in front of it and be safe, because that’s what it is.

Shepherd’s pie in our house usually just means if we have ground meat and potatoes, we can figure out what else to throw in our pie. This version of the dish that I’m about to share with you was the best we’ve made so far and the reason for that is simply because we had made a delicious mushroom wine pan sauce the night before to put on top of some chicken. We had a good bit left over and used it in the sauce blended in with the ground beef layer. This added a real pop to that part of the shepherd’s pie, but I’m going to improvise the actual ingredient amounts since it was created on the fly the night before.

My husband and I have an ongoing debate ourselves as to what ingredients make the best shepherd’s pie, where I believe peas are a key ingredient as their own layer and Jonathan is a firm believer in green beans. Maybe you say it’s 6 one way and half a dozen the other, but for me, the peas give a critical dynamic to the flavor without the rigidity of green beans (we’re talking FRESH here, never canned and mushy). However, for the purpose of this shepherd’s pie recipe, we did use his green beans, and yes, it was delicious. Jonathan 1: Ashley 0.

Since we’ve just recently moved back to the states, we only shipped a few of the kitchen items that were either gifts, the performance of them were irreplaceable or it just made sense to keep them. Casserole dishes were not on the list for a few reasons: 1) the quality of cheap glass in Costa Rica was terrible 2) the good stuff was way too expensive so we never bought it and 3) glass casserole dishes in the States are very cheap. So, we still haven’t prioritized them in our household items budget to get them, but we’re close. Instead, we used our loaf pans, which did the trick just fine.

Here’s how we made our ‘to-die-for’ Shepherd’s Pie:

Shepherd’s Pie Recipe Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
1/2 C. left over mushroom, white wine pan sauce (or sauté 1 C fresh button mushrooms in a touch of oil, then add 1/8 C. dry white wine and reduce slightly.)
1 lb fresh green beans, washed, ends clipped and cut into 1″ pieces
4 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
2 large tomatoes, skinned, seeded and diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1/4 C milk or almond milk (unsweetened)
2 Tbsp salted butter
2 Tbsp grapeseed oil
Salt and pepper

Shepherd’s Pie Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Heat a medium-large pot with water to boiling and add 1 tsp of salt, the sprig of rosemary and cubed potatoes. Cook until they fall of the fork when poked. Drain, discard rosemary sprig and set potatoes aside.

Heat a small pot with water to boiling and add the green beans. Cook to al dente and still have green color. Drain and run under cold water.

Meanwhile, in a large, deep frying pan, heat the grapeseed oil to medium-high heat and add onions.
Once the onions are translucent, add the minced garlic and ground beef. Cook until brown all the way through then drain off fat.

If you have the pan sauce ready, add it to the beef mixture already in the pan and bring up to temperature.
If you don’t have a pan sauce ready, sauté the mushrooms on medium-high heat with an additional 1 Tbs of grapeseed oil until soft. Add white wine and reduce for 3-4 minutes. Then add to onion and garlic mixture and continue.

Add the green beans and diced tomatoes to the beef mixture and bring up to temperature, stirring to mix thoroughly. Set mixture aside.

In a large mixing bowl, mash the cooked potatoes with garlic powder, butter and milk until smooth with few lumps.

Pour beef mixture into a casserole pan (or in our case divide into two loaf pans).
Top with mashed potatoes and bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until bubbling.
Remove from the oven and let sit for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Cherry Tomato Salad with Homemade Croutons

CheapFoodHere — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Cherry Tomato Salad with Homemade Croutons: A New Summer Favorite

I don’t recall how I came across this recipe, but I believe it was from the Smitten Kitchen Facebook page since they are a regular in my feed. This tomato salad recipe stuck out because we had a bag of cherry tomatoes in the fridge for about a week or so and some home made bread in the freezer waiting to be used for breadcrumbs or croutons. With basil growing in the back yard and all but one ingredient already in the house, it was the perfect cheap side dish for us.

We varied the recipe ever-so-slightly since we recently ran out of shallots (which we bought SUPER-cheap at the neighborhood Asian food store – $2.50/lb), used all red cherry tomatoes, added some olives and we made the crouton topping from a left over homemade loaf of rye bread. But, it’s a really simple recipe and uses a pretty standard base, so, you can’t really mess too much up. What I love about cheap recipes using ingredients already on hand and not bought for the specific purpose of a recipe, is that they seem free. Not that I wouldn’t use those ingredients up on something else, it just seems overly convenient.

I do love a good salad recipe and when it has fresh, in-season tomatoes, it’s bound to be a keeper. Combine the acidic flavor of tomatoes with olives and red wine vinegar, it really puts a summery zip into a meal. Salads also tend to be quick to assemble since there’s hardly any cooking time required but prep-time can be a little daunting depending on how many ingredients there are. But, this is also another reason to love this recipe: it has very few ingredients and very little prep time. Hooray!

Alright, let’s get on with it then. First, a photo preview:

Cheap Cherry Tomato Salad Recipe

Ingredients

1 extra thick slice of stale, homemade rye bread
1/2 of a small red onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 Tbsp finely chopped kalamata olives
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 tsp ground Black pepper
3 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 Lb of cherry tomatoes
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
Pinch of sugar
7-8 Large basil leaves finely slivered

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and coarsely chop the slice of bread
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, place the bread crumbs, onion, garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, pepper, 2 Tbsp of olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Toss to evenly coat the crumbs.
Spread crumbs onto a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 12-16 minutes, flipping the crumbs over once.
Once they are golden brown, remove from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet.
Meanwhile, slice all of the cherry tomatoes in half and place on a large plate, cut side up. Sprinkle with chopped olives.
In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining olive oil, red wine vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of sugar. Drizzle mixture over the tomatoes and olives.
Sprinkle the cooled bread crumbs over the tomato-olive mixture, top with basil and serve immediately.

Square Buttermilk Chive & Cheddar Biscuits

CheapFoodHere — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Here’s a quick recipe based on a great recipe post for the best buttermilk biscuits from a fellow foodie, Pinch My Salt. I wanted to whip up a batch of my famous biscuits with chives and cheddar that I usually make, but this time I had buttermilk (powder). All the better my biscuits have become with the addition of buttermilk.

Without further adieu:

Square Buttermilk Chive & Cheddar Biscuits

Makes roughly 20 small biscuits

Ingredients

1 1/4 Cup cake flour
3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 Cup butter, cut into small chunks
3/4 Cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp finely chopped chives
1/4 Cup of fancy shredded cheddar cheese
2 tsp garlic powder

Directions

Be sure to keep your chopped butter cold in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the biscuit dough
Preheat oven to 500 degrees
On a clean work surface, spread a generous amount of flour.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flours, baking soda, baking powder, chives, garlic powder, cheddar cheese and salt, until well-combined.
Toss in the chilled butter chunks and cut it in with a pastry cutter and then with your finger tips to get a good coarse mixture with no large chunks of butter.
Pour in buttermilk and stir until a dough ball forms. Do NOT over mix. This is crucial for fluffy biscuits.
On the floured work surface, knead the dough 2-3 times and flatten out to 1/2″ thick (we’re not looking for height with these square biscuits).
With a floured butcher’s knife, cut into 2-3″ squares.
Place squares onto a non-greased cookie sheet and place in the center of the oven for 6-8 minutes or until golden brown.
Spread extra melted butter on top when removed from the oven.

Homemade Bread French Toast – With Granola, Peanut Butter and Bananas

CheapFoodHere — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0000

French Toast made with homemade bread, granola, peanut butter and bananas

One of the many ways to save money on food is to bake your own bread. This is something I haven’t explored much with in the past, but since moving back to the States, breadmakers are a dime a dozen. It didn’t take us two weeks to find a yard sale with a $1 breadmaker. Holla! Now, I know that it’s not crucial to have a breadmaker in order to bake your own bread, but wow it takes the mess and manual labor out of it. I’m still learning the quirky differences in the various types of flours and yeasts but I love the smell and texture of freshly baked bread right out of the oven. My husband has been doing his pizza dough in there now too, cheater.

After the first few loaves of bread in the new-used breadmaker, I decided to revert back to a simple, no-fail, white bread recipe. It turned out amazing, with a beautiful crisp crust and soft, fluffy and warm inside. I was pretty proud of my bread machine at this point.

One thing to remember about homemade bread is that it really doesn’t last more than 3 days, and even that 3rd day leaves you wanting it fresh out of the oven instead. Yes, it’s true, you become a bread snob shortly after learning to make your own bread, but why shouldn’t you? Your bread is better than the bagged crap at the store selling for too much money. So, if you don’t eat all of the loaf by the third day and it starts to get hard, use it for French Toast.

French Toast is much better when you use thick slices of somewhat dry bread, so that it doesn’t become soggy when you dip it in the batter. My homemade white bread was at the perfect texture when I needed it most. I had been jonesing for some French Toast for a few days and this particular morning seemed to be the perfect one. So, I set out and remembered a recipe I did a few years ago that included peanut butter, bananas and granola. This batch came together slightly different. Here’s how I made it:

French Toast with Peanut Butter, Granola and Bananas

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 Cup almond milk
1 large egg
2 thick slices of homemade white bread (2-3 days old)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 Cup rolled oats
1/2 Cup finely chopped walnuts
1 Tbsp ground flax seed
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
4 Tbsp raw honey
8 tsp natural peanut butter
16 thin slices of banana
2 fresh strawberries (for garnish)

Directions

In a medium-sized bowl, mix up eggs with almond milk and cinnamon
On a medium-sized plate, combine the oats, flax, and walnuts. Mix together with your hand until well-combined.
Heat up 1 Tbsp butter in a small/medium frying pan on medium heat
Cut the two bread slices into 4 equal squares
Dip the first 4 squares into the egg mixture and drag the sides through the granola mixture.

Place them into the frying pan and let cook for 3-4 minutes until golden brown on the bottom. Flip with tongs and brown the other side. Remove from the pan and set on a clean plate.

With the remaining 4 pieces of bread, repeat steps 3-6.
While the 2nd set of French Toast squares are cooking, spread a teaspoon of peanut butter and two slices of banana on each of the finished squares and stack them on top of each other.

Slice the strawberry thinly and place on top of the stack.
Pour honey over the top and add a dash of extra cinnamon. Repeat with the 2nd set of French Toast squares.
Serve hot.

Cauliflower Mashed Faux-tatoes

CheapFoodHere — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Experimenting with Cauliflower as Mashed Faux-tatoes

While my husband and I were testing out the 4 Hour Body diet, we started to get a little bored with the food we were eating. I’m sure this was because we weren’t accustomed to strictly eating foods without starch or a high amount of carbs, so we had to learn a whole new repertoire of recipes and understand the increase in amount of food consumed. One noticeable difference in how we were cooking was how much more food we needed to eat since there were no breads, potatoes, pastas, rices or other fillers accompanying the meats, vegetables and legumes.

The 4 Hour Body diet was a hard adjustment to make and we still wanted to make sure we weren’t overdoing the amount of meat we were eating, since this is a large part of the diet. We know the health risks in eating too much chicken, beef, pork and fish, even if they are organic, so we tried to eat a lot more vegetables and legumes instead of gorging on meats. This lead us to explore starch substitutes like garbanzo flour and other bean flours, making vegetable chips for snacks and mashing cauliflower to simulate mashed potatoes.

We wouldn’t be doing cheapfoodhere.com justice unless we analyzed the cost of our side dish and while we’re at it, we’ll do a health analysis as well. According to a UK publication: “At around 29p per 100g (roughly one serving), broccoli is rich in a plant chemical called indole-3 carbinol – or I3C – which significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer, according to a recent study. It is also a source of immune-boosting vitamin C.

But cauliflower, at just 18p per 100g, packs a more powerful punch with similar levels of I3C and higher levels of lecithin, a fatty acid that helps lower cholesterol.

It also contains vitamin C and folate, which helps to prevent birth defects, as well as dietary fibre, which aids weight loss. And it’s a native veg so clocks up fewer air miles.

Winner: Cauliflower by a knockout”

While they are usually similarly priced, cauliflower is almost always slightly cheaper and definitely cheaper by weight since they are more dense than broccoli and you’re paying by the head. The average price I’ve found on cauliflower is roughly $2 per head and with mashed faux-tatoes, you will need a medium-sized head for every two people. That’s a pretty sweet side dish and can get pretty close to satisfying your mid-week hankering for some real mashed potatoes.

I’m not sure who coined the term ‘faux-tatoes’ but it’s fun to say and definitely serves it’s purpose. We scoured the internet for low-carb recipes for alternative side dishes and came across a few for faux-tatoes that included chick peas in some, cauliflower in others but a lot of them used cheese, which is a no-no for the 4HB. Without much success in finding a high-quality recipe, I set off to create one of my very own.

Cauliflower Mashed Faux-tatoes Recipe

Cauliflower Mashed Faux-tatoes Ingredients

1 large head of fresh cauliflower
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
1/4 stick of butter
1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Cauliflower Mashed Faux-tatoes Directions

Cut the cauliflower into florets. Yes you can use the stem too.

Put the florets into a large pot and fill with water until it just covers them.

Add the mustard seeds, cayenne pepper and 1/2 tsp salt to the water.

Bring to a boil and cook until just soft. About 6-8 minutes.

Strain the cauliflower and place back into the empty cooking pot.

Add the butter, rosemary, remaining 1/2 tsp salt and pepper and with a potato masher (I used a submersion blender) and mash to the desired consistency.

Serve hot.