WEEK #3—GROUND BEEF #2

February 28, 2013

While doing clean-up on my blogs I discovered I'd never got this post up and running.  It was originally written for the week of July 4, 2012 and for some reason never left the draft mode. I did some adjustments to it and so here it is.  Finally!  Hopefully I'll get the rest of the 52 weeks up soon.

July 4, 2012

It’s ground beef time again.  As I said in the beginning we eat a lot of ground beef, so technically every other week my menus will be ground beef based for a while.  After all what can’t you make with ground beef?

Please note that most, if not all, of the recipes I do with ground beef could be done with other ground meats.  You might have to make a few allowances for fat content or such to keep things from drying out, but pretty much you can interchange the ground meat ingredient without much change.  Unless, perhaps with wild meats, such as venison, but if you are cooking with wild meats you most likely KNOW what you need to do to make the recipe work. 

As usual I’m running a little behind on my menu posts, so this is being done during the July 4^th week and therefore you will be seeing our holiday cook out menu for that day during the week. It will look like a huge menu for just the three of us, but we LOVE leftover grilled meats, so when I am cooking I am doing so with planned leftovers in mind.

Today is Tuesday and I have the Donvier in the freezer preparing for our homemade ice cream for tomorrow’s dessert.  And the chicken leg quarters to grill, along with tomorrow’s ground beef and bologna are already thawing in the refrigerator.  I’ll boil the eggs for the deviled eggs later on today. 

My son has already made a delicious huge batch of chocolate chip cookies both for sharing at work today and to go with our ice cream tomorrow.  We are in full holiday mode here.

We’ll have zero fireworks because we don’t want to burn the place down, not to mention the fact that the cost of those does not comply with the budget we have going right now.  We’d rather save money we would have spent on fireworks to travel to Walt Disney World in the future on a shoestring budget to have a wealth of fun and enjoy their fireworks while there.  If you are interested in how you can travel to WDW cheaply, and still get the most fun see my blog posts on the subject. How to Plan a Frugal Trip to Walt DisneyWorld,  Payingfor your Magical Trip, Saving Money While onthe Trip—Getting There,  Saving Money While on the Trip—Food! GloriousFood!,  and Saving Money While on the Trip—Souvenirs and Other Things.

So instead we  will have a great day of watching the latest Harry Potter movie and other movies we have recorded scheduled, complete with popcorn and a little Pepsi (an uncommon treat around here any more), along with a cookout and some down time as a family. During the evening hours we’ll watch fireworks on tv in the cool of the house.  Both men are off work for the holiday and that makes for an even better time. 

In this week’s menu you will also see the appearance of using my muffin tins for things other than just muffins.  For a whole list of ideas on other uses of the muffin tin and other common household items view “Muffin Tins, Not Just for Muffins and Cupcakes Any More. “

Anyway, here is the menu for Week #3—Ground Beef #2.  Hope you have a Happy and Safe July 4^th!

BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITIES:

Basic Cake Donuts/Muffins

Raisin Bran

Grapenuts

Oatmeal

Farina

Fruit salad

Dried Fruit

COMMENTS:

My husband loves cake donuts, but we don’t love the calories from frying donuts.  So for Christmas  I purchased him two donut pans and we’ve been experimenting with different recipes.  We’ve found that muffin recipes work well, especially if you add a little glaze.  As time goes on there will be various other donut recipes posted as we find ones we like.  This was the first, other than the one that came on the pan—which we can’t find right now, that he really likes.  He eats his unglazed.  Me I want the glazing—gotta have my calories you know!

LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES

MuffinTin Corn Dogs—once we’ve had them for dinner

Spaghetti and Meatballs—once we’ve had them for dinner

Home canned beef soup

Jarred salad with cucumbers from the garden

PB&J

Potted Meat Salad sandwiches.

COMMENTS:

In an effort to stick with keeping things cool in the house I’ve taken to cooking various muffin tin meals.  These make great individual servings, that leftover well and re-heat quickly.  They also cook in record time.  After all the shorter time the oven is on, the better it is when it’s 100+ degrees outside.

WEEK 3—DAY 1, GROUND BEEF 2

Red Topped Meat Loaf

Mashed Potatoes—make a big batch for uses later in the week

Peas

Jarred salad

Toasted French Bread

Applesauce Spice Cake

Tea

COMMENTS:

Red Topped Meatloaf is the basic ground beef meatloaf with the ketchup topping we all grew up with.  You can either cook it in your Summer Kitchen in either your turkey roaster or crockpot.  Or if you prefer in muffin tins to speed up cooking in your oven.

We like potato salad made with mashed potatoes, so later this week you will see the leftover mashed potatoes appear with the holiday big meal. If you prefer a different type then go ahead and prepare your potatoes while boiling the potatoes for the meatloaf then cool and refrigerate for being one step ahead in that meal preparation.

WEEK 3-Day 2

MuffinTin Corn Dogs

Frozen French Fries

Pork ‘n Beans

Refrigerator Pickles

Tea

Applesauce Spice Cake

COMMENTS:

As I mentioned earlier we are trying to cut down fried foods in our household—except on the fourth—sorry doc, so I’ve been experimenting with how to have our favorites without frying them. 

On one list a woman recently posted she made these using a pre-packaged cornbread mix.  Since I make all my own mixes I first tried them with my Cornbread Master Mix cornbread and it came out a bit too dry and crumbly for our liking. 

So then I decided to use my Corn Dog recipe that uses that master mix and found we liked the texture and firmness better.  An additional tweak I did was on the second batch I used my mini loaf pans instead of muffin tins and found they accommodated the shape of the hot dog link better. 

WEEK 3-DAY 3

Moo Gurgle Tacos

Mexican Rice

Guacamole

Flan

Tea

COMMENTS:

Moo Gurgle is our quick and easy homemade taco filler recipe that we use in numerous ways.  My husband made it as a teenager and then introduced it to me while we were dating nearly 40 years ago. 

It didn’t earn its unique name until we had teenagers of our own, however.  A group of them went to our lake house together and wanted to make tacos while there. 

They called and asked me for the recipe and I rattled it off—forgetting to tell them to drain the meat after they browned it.  Being teenagers they purchased the cheapest, fattest ground beef they could.

All the kids called me “Mom” so when I was asking them how the tacos turned out one young man said “Mom, those moos really gurgled!”, referring to the thick grease in the taco filler.  Thus the name was born “Moo Gurgle”.

WEEK 3-DAY 4—July 4, 2012

Charcoaled Hamburgers, plain

Charcoaled Hamburgers, bbq sauce

Grilled Bologna

Char-grilled Chicken Leg quarters

Deviled eggs

Potato salad

Butterfly potatoes

Onion strings

Zesty Onion Ring Dipping Sauce

Cole Slaw

PEPSI

Homemade Ice cream

Chocolate chip cookies

COMMENTS:

We thoroughly believe in this house when you fire up the charcoal grill or a wood fire you use every bit of the fuel you put in the grill.  We also love grilled leftovers, so while we’ll cook all the above on the fourth not all of it will be eaten for certain.  It will be a pick and choose meal.  “This is what we cooked, choose what you want and the rest will reappear in other meals.”

All the hamburgers with bbq sauce consist of is a beaten egg mixed with bbq sauce and then mixed into the ground beef patties and grilled.  One word to the wise, they do tend to fall apart easily—despite the egg for a binder, so cook them on foil on the grill.   I use Kay’s BBQSauce as the sauce in them.

We make up for all of the non-fried foods this week in this one meal.  Butterfly potatoes is our name for the potatoes that you see at fairs of all sorts that are potato chip thin and cut in a spiral.  I was lucky enough to acquire one of those potato cutters at a craft fair years ago and we have enjoyed it ever since.

I’ll try to get one of the guys to create a pattern for it and I’ll put up photos of it as well asap.

We are Pepsi addicts in this household, but once we decided to become super gazelle intense on paying off our debt Pepsi is one of the things we removed from our life.  Now we each drink one sweetened beverage a day (juice, tea, lemonade or kool-ade) and the rest of the time we drink water or unsweetened tea.  I will admit it’s hard going from lugging around a Pepsi all day to going to a single sweetened beverage (I generally do a juice), but it has saved us so much money it is unbelievable. (Do the math on how much you pay for soft drinks in a week and multiply that by the month/year—you will be astounded!) Plus all three of us are losing weight and are feeling better. 

So the Pepsi for this one day—two 2-liters, is a special treat.  The bottles will be washed out and saved for future events—stay tuned for those.

WEEK 3-DAY 5

Smoked Chicken Salad in Tortilla bowls

Lime Cilantro Rice

Refried Beans or home canned pinto or kidney beans

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tea

COMMENTS:

What grilled chicken isn’t eaten on the fourth will be deboned, cubed and tossed in with picante, refried beans, corn, lettuce, rice and whatever else we happen to think of for a cool salad on a hot summer night.  We may even forgo cooking the tortilla into a tortilla bowl and simply roll it all up in a burrito style tortilla much like Qdoba burritos.

WEEK 3-DAY 6

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Garlic Toast

Jarred Salad with Italian dressing

Leftover desserts from the week

Tea

COMMENTS:

I generally make a double or triple batch of the spaghetti meatballs—which are different than my Master Mix Meatballs and either can or freeze them with or without the sauce for future grab and run meals.  

Both men also like for me to cook extra pasta for the meatballs and will take the leftovers to work for lunches. 

WEEK 3-DAY 7

Biscuit Cup Tacos

Either leftover Mexican or Lime Cilantro Rice

Tea

Leftover Flan

COMMENTS:

Truly the tail end of the week and a meal of all leftovers, simply reproduced in a slightly different manner.  Quick to bake in the toaster oven in the Summer Kitchen.  Look for any leftover Biscuit Cup Tacos to make an appearance at lunchtime next week.

Jan who wishes you a Happy and Safe Independence Day in OK

WEEK 2 CHICKEN LEG QUARTERS

As the heat of the summer rolls in my thoughts automatically turn to my desire for a Summer Kitchen or a Canning Kitchen as some folks call them. 

In the summertime humans by nature are more active and therefore need more substantial meals to have the energy to do all we want to. 

It is also a time when more foods are preserved in one way or another in millions of homes.  All of this cooking requires heat and heat is the enemy in the summer.

Today, June 25, 2012, the high is suppose to be 106 degrees.  In June!  What are August and September going to be like?  Record air conditioning bills are expected.  Cooking adds heat to the inside of the house and cranks the air conditioner even more.

So as the summer rolls on here in hot and humid Oklahoma expect to see more and more cold foods and outdoor cooking on this blog.  However, don’t think by outdoor cooking I mean simply charcoaling.  No I use a modern version of the old time summer kitchens by moving my electric cooking appliances, and the heat they put out, outside! 

I am hoping to have a homemade solar oven soon, so be prepared for that adventure.  You will see the beginning of the Summer Kitchen cooking with this post.

The main protein item for this week is chicken leg quarters.  Alas the ones I purchased were not on sale, but at $.78 a pound they are still a decent buy.  I purchase them in a 10# bag, then once we have them home we either cook them all up right then if all the meals are using cooked chicken, or we package them up in two leg quarter packages.  This week it was package and freeze.

We find that for most meals two leg quarters will feed the three adults in our family nicely with proper side dishes. These are labeled and frozen until needed.

So here is our menu for the week:

BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITIES

Almond Poppy Seed Muffins

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Raisin Bran

Grapenuts

Oatmeal

Farina

Multigrain cereal

Strawberry Breeze juice

Peaches

Dried fruit

LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES

Bologna sandwiches

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Jarred Salad

Leftovers

Walking Salad

DINNERS WEEK 2—CHICKEN LEG QUARTERS

Day 1

Baked chicken leg quarters

Grandma Zell’s Dressing

Cranberry Sauce

Baked Potatoes

Baked Sweet potatoes

Green beans

Wacky cake

COMMENTS:

I can hear some of you screaming now, baked chicken, baked stuffing, baked potatoes, baked sweet potatoes and a baked cake?  Woman are you NUTS?  It’s 106 degrees outside!  But remember I’m using my Summer Kitchen.  In this case I am using my turkey roaster and placing it securely in the sunroom out of harm’s way. 

And I’m doing it in layers.  I make use of the heating pans I have for my turkey roaster oven by putting the cake in the bottom of the roaster in a 9 x 13 pan.  The potatoes are foil wrapped and on the bottom of the roaster, next to the cake.  Using my heating pans to hold the stuffing with the chicken leg quarters on top of that.

The trick is all cook at near the same temperature.  You preheat the oven and then fill it.  With it being outside there is no cooking heat in the kitchen on this hot summer day.  Plus, you don’t need to stay with it.  Just set a timer in the cool house with you so you will remember to get the cake out of the oven when it’s done as it cooks faster than the other foods.  I start it all at the same time and just remove things as they finish.

If you don't have a turkey roaster, use your toaster oven and microwave to cook this meal outside and cut your cooling bill.

I baked extra potatoes to use in the potato salad the next day.

If you like sun tea you could even make your tea outdoors.  My family does not care for sun tea. But I know many folks that do.

Dinner Day 2

Fish Sticks

Potato Salad

Cole Slaw

CheddarBiscuits

Wacky Cake

Iced tea

COMMENTS:

To beat the heat for this meal I use the toaster oven in the sunroom for baking both the biscuits and the fish sticks. 

DAY 3

Fried Bologna

Kay’sBBQ Sauce

Macaroni ‘n Cheese

Green Beans

Cucumber and Onion Salad

Peanut Butter/Chocolate Chip cookies

Tea

COMMENTS:

I know it’s a southern thing, but fried bologna is good folks.  When my husband got the slicer going he sliced half of the chub thick and the rest thin.  Then a few of the thick slices were fried and then cut in cubes to serve of up with my friend Kay’s BBQ Sauce.  It took me years to get the recipe from her, and I am so glad I did.  Kay has gone on to her reward, but I have fond memories of her every time I make this sauce.

Warning the recipe makes a huge amount, around 5 quarts worth.  Generally I’ll put a jar in the fridge, and the rest I’ll either can or freeze for future use.  When I can it I use the pressure canner due to the butter in it.  Some have told me it could probably be water bath canned safely, because of the ketchup acidity, but I prefer I not take the chance. 

Once you open a jar be sure and refrigerate any leftovers.

My beat the heat strategy for this meal was to cook the BBQ sauce in my large crockpot, and to fry the bologna quickly in the house.  I could have used the electric skillet in the sunroom.  But that would have required me being out in the heat to do it.  I figure the short time it takes to fry bologna wouldn’t be worth me suffering in the heat.  I also cheated and did the bringing of the water to boil for the blue box Mac ‘n Cheese in the house, but because I have an electric stove I was able to turn the burner off as soon as the macaroni was added to the boiling water and the residual heat cooked the pasta perfectly.

The cookies were cooked in the toaster oven in the sunroom.

DAY 4

Chicken Noodle Soup

Jarred salad

Wacky Cake or cookies

Tea

COMMENTS:

Cook the chicken leg quarters in the crockpot in your summer kitchen and you have a filling meal without ever heating up the kitchen.   This recipe combines two Master Mixes to make an entirely separate meal.

DAY 5

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Jarred salad

Garlic toast

Tea

Peach cobbler

COMMENTS:

If you own an electric skillet hit the summer kitchen and use it to make this dish.  Use your rice cooker or a small crockpot to cook your spaghetti noodles.  OR use the same method I used for cooking the macaroni the day before.

The peaches for this meal were purchased as “seconds” at our local feed store.  I got a bag full for $2.50 and they’ve been delicious, but it’s time to finish them up.  So into the cobbler they went.  The cobbler crust was simply Stir ‘n Roll biscuit dough with some sugar and cinnamon added in to a thin version of the biscuit dough that was dropped on the hot syrup from my prepping the peaches and then baked until golden brown in the toaster oven.

DAY 6

FishTacos

Refried beans

Jarred Salad with Chipotle Ranch Dressing

Cinnamon Sugar Flour Tortilla Chips

Tea

COMMENTS:

The first time I ever heard of fish tacos I was a young sahm watching soap operas and one man on the soap was complaining his wife had served him tuna tacos for dinner the night before.  At the time I gagged at the thought of any fish in a taco.

Fast forward through the years and I heard more and more about fish tacos of all sorts.  Then one weekend, back when we were still eating out, we were at Long John Silver’s and they were giving away free fish tacos.  I thought “why not?”  I was hooked! 

Not long after that Taco Bueno started carrying them too.  While one makes them with shredded cabbage on them the other uses shredded lettuce. One uses corn tortillas, the other uses flour tortillas.   Either way they are truly good.  They are something I’ve come to miss since we’ve stopped eating out.  So why not make them at home?  I developed the recipe and was VERY pleased with the outcome.  I hope you will like them too.

DAY 7

Pancakes

Fruit Syrups

Milk

COMMENTS:

We love going to that very famous pancake house for pancakes and waffles, just like everyone else.  One of our favorite parts of the meal is the large variety of flavored pancake syrups.  But why spend the money for so much money for a meal you can make for pennies on the dollar at home in just a few minutes?

As you can see you can easily do Summer Kitchen cooking and help keep your home cooler with just a little pre-planning.

Jan who REALLY  wants a solar cooker and dehydrator in OK