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Post by Mr. Pooka on Oct 25, 2011 10:04:44 GMT -5
I love cooking and keep trading recipes in PMs or in misc threads so I figured I'd put this together for anyone looking for something in particular or who might wanna share some good ones!
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Post by Mr. Pooka on Oct 25, 2011 10:18:15 GMT -5
Mr. Pooka's Simple Corn Bread
1 C yellow cornmeal (I like fairly course)
1 C flour
1/4 C white sugar
4 t. baking poweder
1/2 t. salt
1 egg
1 C milk
1/4 C cooking oil
Simply mix everything (no particular order, I said it was simple!) and pour into greased pan. (I like to use a mini loaf pan to make individual servings for everyone, and have even used a muffin pan.) Bake 425 F for 20 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
Variations I've played with!
~after its all mixed together add some well chopped rhubarb and some extra sugar to sweeten it up a bit and mix it in for a neat fruity variety! I've done the same with cranberries too.
~after pouring in the pan add some fruit (apple slices, berries ect.) or nuts by just dropping them into the batter, or pressing them in, but not mixing. You can make pretty patterns on top and they come out really nice! Good for impressing people (-8
~you can easily savoury up the cornbread with whatever spice you like (I even made ones with cayenne and hot sauce for a louisiana style dinner I made and it was great!) or sweeten it up with a bit more sugar. For sweet ones I like to sprinkle a bit of course (any type you like) sugar on top which also looks great, (-8 (for my last ones I used the sugar left at the bottom of some crystalized ginger we'd finished off!)
Edit ~ This recipe doubles really well too with no changes!
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Post by Kalypsi on Dec 18, 2011 19:31:24 GMT -5
Chicken Curry Salad Recipe...Kinda.... What I put in it: Chicken Dried Cranberries Granny Smith Apples Slivered Almonds Celery Onion Curry Powder Mayo Yogurt Well you boil some chicken in some chicken broth/water mixture. Once that is cooked you shred it up. Then you dice a apple or two. Cut some grapes in half, as many as you want in it. Put in some shredded almonds and either raisin or dried cranberries. Onion and celery diced up and put it in. Put a half cup or less of yogurt, Plain. although tonight I found out I accidentally bought vanilla and used it and it came out pretty good too.. Then like a spoon or two of mayo. Then a couple table spoons curry powder, test it to see how much you like. That's about it. I don't have a concrete recipe for how i make it, but I will link you some other people's set recipes. www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/curry-chicken-salad-recipe/index.htmlwww.theartofdoingstuff.com/the-best-curried-chicken-salad-youll-ever-eat/www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1739,158190-250201,00.html Some put cilantro or fancy mango chutney, I never have tried those ingredients, but they may make it better. Also you can eat this the day you make it, but it is SO much flavorful after a night in the fridge. The flavors just seem to settle and get so much more intense. |
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Post by Mr. Pooka on Dec 19, 2011 19:04:32 GMT -5
thanks tsuki! I've never really bought a lot of curry, I'll have to investigate the types and experiment a bit..
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Post by Cameron on Dec 22, 2011 12:50:46 GMT -5
Oh I have a great recipe for stuffed shells! I'll have to find it, and share it.  |
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Post by Kalypsi on Dec 22, 2011 20:24:31 GMT -5
thanks tsuki! I've never really bought a lot of curry, I'll have to investigate the types and experiment a bit.. Mainly I use the type thats in any groccery store in the spice isle. Its yellow in color. Just says curry powder on it. |
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Post by tierasa on Jan 21, 2012 21:42:33 GMT -5
I was asked to post this... I use this as my base for my Sesame chicken and then I tweak it. I half the amount of sesame oil that goes in the sauce and double the amount of chili paste. Also being that I don't drink or use alcohol, I sub orange juice or lemon for the sherry. I don't deep fry the chicken either since I don't have a deep fryer, but a nice pan fry works as well. It's always good the next day too. allrecipes.com/recipe/addictive-sesame-chicken/detail.aspxMr. Pooka, as for curry paste, it depends on how hot you want it. Yellow is the most mild, followed by red, and then green. For curry powder, most of the time you'll only find the yellow variety in your regular grocery store. EDIT: Here's a pic of the sesame chicken I made the other night using this recipe. i94.photobucket.com/albums/l84/tierasa/DSCF3007.jpg |
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Post by Mr. Pooka on Jan 31, 2012 12:41:30 GMT -5
oh, that looks so good tierasa! hummm almost too good, I know I'd eat way to much of it!
and totally share your recipie cameron! I've been starting a handwritten cookbook of misc family recipes that have been lingering on scraps, cut up magazing pages from the 50's and even older handwritten books... It will be awesome when it all comes together, (-8 It also made me wonder about making a Sphinxy cookbook... wether a collection of stalker favs or a complete fantasy fun book or a mix of both... I have fond memories of finding recipies in old rp books, like forgotten realms... roast cockatrice for example (with added instructions that a chicken might make do if you couldn't find a cockatrice) or Pooka's Pern recipies...
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Post by aholland on May 3, 2013 20:00:27 GMT -5
Total Time:
45 min
Prep
10 min
Cook
35 min
Yield:
8 servings
Ingredients
3 cups thinly sliced Vidalia onions
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 (9-inch) prebaked deep-dish pie shell
2 eggs, beaten
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 slices bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until lightly browned.
Put the pie pan on a sheet pan. Line the bottom of pie crust with the onions.
In a small bowl, beat the eggs and the flour together to combine. Add the milk, sour cream and salt. Mix well and pour over the onions. Garnish with the bacon and bake until firm in the center, about 30 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter and serve.
This is the base recipe. I add mushrooms and extra Bacon. I have thought of adding other vegis lick zucchini or squash.
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Post by Mr. Pooka on May 16, 2013 14:50:13 GMT -5
Frugal meals... the current topic on PI (-8
I'll start with a good one and try to get some more up when I can!
A super fav around here that makes a heavy full meal for our family that comes out to be really inexpensive is my version of a salsbury steak.
One large packaged hamburger patty/person.
one tin of tomato soup
salt/pepper/spices
Veggies if you have them.
Pour the soup in a casserole dish and then fill the tin with water. Pour about a third of the tin into the casserole dish and then mix a few tbps of cornstarch into the cold water and mix well in the tin, then pour it in with the rest. Add your spices (anything you like, I've made a zillion variations... salt, pepper, any herbs, spice mixes like steak mix or whatnot, worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, a minced onion or two, some garlic.. you get the picture, what ever you like/have on hand.. ect.) and mix. Submerge the hamburger patties (if your doing more then 6 you might want to double the soup part). Add any veggies if you want/have them. (if they take a long time to cook, chop them up tiny, like potatoes/carrots. If they are a type that might burn easily, make sure to submerge them in the soup to get coated. Its ok if they float after they are coated.) They can just be tossed on top or mixed with the sauce depending on what you like/want.
Bake at 350 celsius for an hour.
Cook for at least an hour, but don't worry about it cooking a bit longer... there is enough fat in premade burgers that they will never dry out.. its hard to mess this one up, (-8
Then serve this over whatever starch you like... baked potatoes (which can be baked in the oven beside the dish), rice, sliced bread or mashed potatoes ect...
...and thats it! I've used tons of diff kinds of veggies and anything can come out good (standard frozen veggies, chopped onions, broccoli, cabbage.. anything really!). I've also done kale before with one little extra step. wash/dry the kale then chop. mix the harder stem parts into the soup mix. put the leafy parts in a bowl and drizzle a bit of oil over them then a bit of salt/pepper and mix till coated. Pour the kale over the top of everything and DO NOT mix in. Bake the same way, but the Kale will come out all crispy and yummy!
...I've also used diff types of soup if we didn't have/couldn't afford tomato... any creamy type comes out nice, like mushroom. I've also made this with dried soup mixes adding a bit of cornstarch or flour to thicken it up a bit! ... careful with dry mixes that have pasta in them. It comes out nice, but there is a good chance that some of the noodles will stick/burn on the bottom of the dish. (doesn't affect the flav much, but is crazy hard to clean!)
Why its frugal! We can buy a box of hamburgers here with 12 big burgers in it for about $5. We only use 1 each (3 total for our family, so thats 4 meals).
1.50 meat
0.75 soup
0.25 rice (maybe .50 for potatoes)
+ Veggies (frozen veggies on sale would add about $1, much less if you find some good deals on the reduced rack and freeze yourself, like mushrooms/tomatoes/zuccini ect whatever!)
+ Spices (almost always on hand and the prices are almost not calculatable depending on how much you use... even expensive ones like steak spice. Say a bottle costs $6 but you used it for 40/50 meals we are still in the super cheap catagory)
so for under $3 we have a super big filling meal. Prices will of course vary where you are, but improvisation is what created this dish in the first place, (-8
(for example, I just bought about 15 pounds of tomatoes from the reduced rack for about $6 total... they were super ripe and one more day they may have spoiled, but I washed them, chopped them (a few diff sizes for diff uses) and then froze them... now I can toss tomatoes in anything for the next several months, (-8) Tomatoes have been extremly expensive here the last couple of years.... you just have to keep your eyes open for deals like this!
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Post by Mr. Pooka on May 16, 2013 15:06:13 GMT -5
More Frugal Things!
Buy a freezer, even a tiny apartment sized one will save you tons and tons of money by letting you purchase food in bulk when its on sale and using it later.
Buy a slow cooker. You can cook tons of super frugal meals in one of these and they are cheap! (you can be super frugal, I see these at garage sales all the time for just a couple bucks... but you can get a new on on sale for around $20-30) You can cook the cheapest cuts of meat in one and make them come out perfect... you can also super strech any meat with whatever veggies are on sale affordable. (I made a chicken meal a few days ago with one chicken breast, lots of potatoes, onions, mushrooms and peppers, spices and water, then served over rice. Our whole family had a chicken dinner from one chicken breast!)
Figure out your local shopping stores schedule. For example, in the summer the grocery stores advertise and try to sell expensive cuts of meat for the weekends for BBQs, but on monday or tuesday everything left will be deeply discounted and marked down. Stock up if its a good deal!
Just because its on sale or 'marked down' figure out the math and make sure you are still getting a good deal! If your bad at math bring a calculator to the store, (-8 Make sure its worth it!
By a rice cooker. Anyone can make rice in a pot but you cannot mess up rice in a rice cooker. I actually preffer the cheapes kind you can buy with only one button. Anything with a digital readout is going to be double the price and have options you will never ever want or need. I bought a nice little cheap one for around $12 and with it all you need to do is measure your rice and water and go! Sooo worth it because you will make more rice and never accidently forget about it and burn it ect... You can also make complete meals in them! Take some leftover flavourful meat (piece of a leftover steak, chopped up/ a couple of ribs with meat on them/ some leftover BBQ of anything) and mix it in with the raw rice with a bit of salt/pepper/spice/hotsauce/soysauce ect and instant super cheap meal!
(I also use my rice cooker to make corn meal porrige, boil cabbage for dinners ect... they are super versitile!)
Learn to Cook! (and don't eat out!) you don't need to invest a lot of time in this, but with a few basic cooking skills you can cut your food bills by tons! Even the cheapest sorry looking mcdonalds burger is expensive when you compare them to grocery store prices!
The more a food becomes processed/handled the more expensive it becomes (and in some cases the less like food it becomes!). Every single step adds costs. I don't understand why anyone would by pregratted cheese for example! Premade frozen meals are more expensive then anything you can make and with a little practise yours can be tons and tons better!
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Post by PonyMama on May 16, 2013 15:28:22 GMT -5
Meatballs
~ 1lb ground beef
~ 1/2 sm/med onion finely chopped
~ 1 egg
~ 1/2 cup quick oats
~ Pepper to season
Combine all ingredients together and roll into bite size meatballs, or bigger if you prefer
Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for about 20-25 mins, turning at least once in that time, until they are brown
You can use them for a meal from that point or let them cool and place into a freezer bag and freeze for eating at a later date.
One of my family's favourites is Meatballs. You can buy a box of premade ones for about $12 if you are lucky and they have stuff in them that most people can only guess on how to pronounce, so I started to make my own.
I will buy two Rolls of ground beef, usually about $12 each, so $24 for two and do half a package at a time but use them all in one day, to make 6 nights worth of meals, since you can freeze these. It is a simple recipe and by all means add more spice, but these made simply can be used for many meals. The quick oats replace the breadcrumbs and are much healthier for you.
On the day of using I pull out one bag, let thaw about 1 hour, to be able to break them apart, since these are already cooked all you have to do is reheat them.
with Cream of Mushroom soup
~Heat meatballs in pan
~ mix 2 cans of soup with 2 cans on milk (can use water but it will not thicken as much)
~Pour soup over meatballs, bring to boil then reduce heat and cover letting it simmer for about 20-30 minutes
~Serve over rice
As meatball subs
~ Heat meatballs in pan
~Add italian totamo sauce, bring to boil
~serve on buns sprinkle with grated mozza
ETA: RE-Use your freezer bags, by washing them. They are still useable even if you have used them once before. Just wash it. let dry then use again. Only when they have holes in them are they not able to be used for freezer type meals
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Post by lostdollie on May 18, 2013 18:17:50 GMT -5
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Post by springacres on May 21, 2013 0:41:05 GMT -5
I've been learning to cook myself and this is a recipe I just tried tonight. My family loved it!
Swiss Chard & Ham Frittata (makes 8 servings)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large bunch Swiss chard (about 12 oz.), tough part of stems removed, leaves chopped (can substitute kale or other slightly bitter leafy greens instead)
1 cup diced ham (about 4 oz.)
12 large eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (approx. 205 degrees C). Warm oil in a large nonstick, ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté garlic until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in chard. Cover and cook, stirring twice, until chard is tender, about 5 minutes. Remove cover, stir in ham.
Crack eggs into a large bowl, season with salt and pepper and whisk to blend. Pour eggs into skillet over chard and ham. Stir to distribute ingredients as evenly as possible before eggs begin to set. Cook on top of stove, carefully lifting sides of frittata with a spatula to let uncooked eggs flow underneath, until lightly browned around edges, 3-5 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmesan, transfer skillet to oven. Bake, uncovered, until firm in center and slightly browned on top, about 10 minutes. Cut into wedges; serve.
Tips:
-Kale makes an excellent substitute if you can't find Swiss chard.
-If you don't have a nonstick, ovenproof skillet, a Dutch oven works just fine.
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Post by Cameron on May 21, 2013 0:48:15 GMT -5
My recipe for Peanut Butter cookies. Made it myself, and of course I ALWAYS add more peanut butter than the recipe calls for. Normally I put about 2 cups of PB in it, but 1/2cp works just fine for those who aren't peanut butter enthusiasts. ^^   |
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