The Life » Half-Assed Housewife

Meatless threes: Some new ideas

Still having good luck with our resolution to eat less meat. A lot of the meals have been really simple, not much to write home (or blog) about. But I thought I would share some recent recipe finds.

I got Quick Fix Vegegarian: Healthy Home-Cooked Meals in 30 Minutes or Less as a Christmas present and it has been a great resource for weekday dinners that consist of more than pasta with a jar of sauce poured over it. The Indonesian-Style Noodles and Ginger Sesame Noodles with Broccoli were both hits with the adults and toddler. We also had a good experience with, believe it or not, Peanut Butter and Tomato Quesadilla. I know, it sounds foul, but it really was not at all terrible and the Kiddo loved it. (She likes tortillas and loves peanut butter and tomatoes, so I thought, ‘Why not?)

Also, we love Indian food and the daal recipes on IndianFoodForever.com have been great. I don’t know how authentic they are, but they taste like the dishes I’ve had in my favorite Indian restaurants, so, good enough for me. Next, I’m going to try making daal in the slow cooker. (Also found this great site with tips for making all kinds of Indian food using a slow cooker.) If that works, I am going to be in heaven.

Technorati Tags: food

The website that saved my marriage

OK, so it wasn’t really in trouble to begin with. I just like catchy headlines.

Like a lot of couples, though, money and decisions about how it is spent or saved is a tough area. I originally signed up for PearBudget, the web-based expense-tracking and budgeting tool when we first moved back to the States. But, it’s only been in the last month that we’ve been consistent about using it to track all of our receipts and income.

For some reason, it is tons easier for me to use than stand-alone programs like Quicken. It’s very easy to edit categories and other information. You can budget for both monthly and irregular expenses, and you can easily see where you are in relation to your monthly plan at a gance. We’ve really been able to see where our money is going and set realistic goals for budgeting and saving. I think we were both surprised that the areas we thought we were wasting money weren’t so bad, but we have problems in areas we thought were a non-issue. For example, we really don’t eat out very much, but we do spend way too much on groceries for a family of three. (The cats eat cheap.) I attribute this to my love of trying new recipes, which has resulted in a cabinet full of rather exotic herbs and spices, and jars of various international condiments in the fridge. We’re prioritizing meal planning and sale shopping this month to see what we can do in that area.

I really liked this post from Small Notebook on what to do with a budget once you’ve got one. Rather than feeling constrained by ours, I feel it makes us both feel more in control and better able to talk about what we want and how to get there than we were before.

Meatless threes: Week #1

We’re doing OK with the resolution to eat veggie at least three times a week. The Spouse says he’s OK with eating even less meat, so we may explore becoming weekday vegetarians. The Kiddo has never been that much of a meat eater anyway, so I already have to make sure she gets dairy, beans or eggs to keep her in protein.

Brief summary of our meatless meals last week: 1) spaghetti with basic marinara sauce, actually a backup meal because I forgot to soak the beans for 2) black bean soup and rice; 3) our only standout veggie meal was this yummy dried mushroom risotto.* Risotto is definitely going to happen a lot more in our house now that I don’t have to stand over the pot and stir.

It also gives me more opportunities to sneak some green veggies into The Kiddo since rice in all its forms is one of the foods she rarely refuses.

*If you have a rice cooker, you should definitely get Beth Hensberger and Julie Kaufmann’s Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook. The recipes are easy and awesome.

‘Greening’ our diet

Though negotiations continue, the Spouse and I were able to agree on some of the changes we want to make in the new year.

The easiest being a reduction in the amount of meat we consume. Raising animals for food on a large scale consumes huge amounts of natural resources—arable land and water—and yields disproportionately higher amounts of waste compared to plant-based agriculture. Approximately four pounds of grain must be consumed for every one pound of beef produced. Roughly 70 percent of the grain grown in the United States goes toward animal feed. Eating more vegetables and less meat is a healthier diet both for us and for the environment.

We usually eat several vegetarian meals a week, and while it would be best for the environment to eliminate it completely, we don’t feel able to do it yet.

However, I do think it will be pretty easy to eat at least three meatless dinners a week and that’s what our commitment is for 2010. Breakfast at our house is usually vegetarian anyway (sometimes containing eggs) and lunch is most often leftovers for myself and better half and a peanut butter sandwich for the Kiddo. So cutting out meat from dinner three times a week should effectively mean three meatless days.’

To track our progress, I plan to do some mini-posts each week logging our meat-free days and what we ate. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

What a crock

One of the items that narrowly escaped the garage sale purge last week was my 15-year-old Rival Crockpot. (Yeah, green and white, with little purple flowers on the side. One knob, three choices: “off,” “low,” “high.” I’m talking old school, here.) It was gamely simmering four quarts of Fifteen Bean Soup at the time, though, (Spouse’s idea) so it got a last-minute reprieve.

It’s not like it sits around gathering dust. I use it at least twice a week. It’s cooked in every home I’ve had since college, which includes two U.S. states and two continents. But it’s old, the plastic lid has a permanent filmy cloud, and instead of “low” and “high” the actual settings are more like “high” and “higher.” I had been secretly flirting online with younger fancier cookers, with their seductive ‘keep warm’ settings and timers.

But, in the end, it was there. It cooked the soup perfectly. And since then, I’ve found new appreciation (and uses) for Old Faithful.

Last Monday, I did a version of this Tom Kha Kai. I could eat this three meals a day for pretty much the rest of my life. The rest of my family liked it, though probably not that much.

Later in the week was this recipe for Charros Beans, soaking the beans the night before then cooking all day on high. They were awesome.

I just discovered Stephanie O’Dea’s blog A Year of Slow Cooking, and might not ever turn on my stove again. We’ve had this Salsa Chicken and Black Bean Soup, and I’m dying to try her recipes for Apricot Chicken and Chile Verde.

My other new favorite blog is Freeze Happy, which though not totally about crockpots, has a lot of crock-friendly recipes and great advice about preserving leftovers and cooking in bulk to use later.

I guess I’m saying what I’ve learned from these past few days is: Old doesn’t equal worthless (hello!!), and younger may have more tricks, bells, and whistles, but it’ll still take time to figure them all out. Sometimes it’s better to stay with what you know.