February Pantry Challenge... - Page 5

[Jennisee]

OK, guys, I need some garlic ideas. I bought a BIG (think "quart-size") container of minced garlic at Costco a couple weeks ago for $3.50. I have no doubt that I'll get $3.50 worth of garlic out of it, but I want to try to use it all before it goes bad. We love garlic in this house, but I guess I'm just not feeling very creative right now. Here are my ideas so far. Please help me add more!

garlic bread
add to spaghetti sauce
garlic mashed potatoes
garlicky oven-roasted potatoes/other veggies
inject into roasts using flavor injector
add to meat marinades

[leomom]

Originally Posted by Jennisee

OK, guys, I need some garlic ideas. I bought a BIG (think "quart-size") container of minced garlic at Costco a couple weeks ago for $3.50. I have no doubt that I'll get $3.50 worth of garlic out of it, but I want to try to use it all before it goes bad. We love garlic in this house, but I guess I'm just not feeling very creative right now. Here are my ideas so far. Please help me add more!

garlic bread
add to spaghetti sauce
garlic mashed potatoes
garlicky oven-roasted potatoes/other veggies
inject into roasts using flavor injector
add to meat marinades

You can mix some in with butter and you'll have soem garlic butter on hand for breads, potatoes, etc.

[quest4quiet]

I garlic and use it in just about every meal. My favorite is sliced tomatoes (pretty thick), topped w/ garlic and basil. You brush them w/ a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, splash of balsamic vinegar if you're feeling festive. Top w/garlic and fresh basil and broil or grill for just a few minutes. Throw on some cheese (mozzarella and feta together are esp good) and broil til cheese is slightly brown/bubbly. I usually use about a teaspoon of garlic per slice.

[janerose]

Originally Posted by Jennisee

OK, guys, I need some garlic ideas. I bought a BIG (think "quart-size") container of minced garlic at Costco a couple weeks ago for $3.50. I have no doubt that I'll get $3.50 worth of garlic out of it, but I want to try to use it all before it goes bad. We love garlic in this house, but I guess I'm just not feeling very creative right now. Here are my ideas so far. Please help me add more!

garlic bread
add to spaghetti sauce
garlic mashed potatoes
garlicky oven-roasted potatoes/other veggies
inject into roasts using flavor injector
add to meat marinades

FYI, I've had one of these jars FOREVER and it's still good. Just used it last night actually!

[annettemarie]

Well, the bread dough pizza was pretty good, although the crust was a little undercooked toward the center. Maybe I need to pre-bake it before adding toppings next time. Oh well- I have five more loaves and we have pizza every Friday night, so I have time to tweak it!
Annette

[Amys1st]

Annette marie- I make bread baggetts out of my pizza dough recipe and they turn out very yummy.

I sometimes cook the crust about 8 minutes before I add toppings. I also have a pizza stone that makes the crust every so cruncky perfect.

We make homemade pizza every friday night and have forever.

Would you like my pizza dough recipe? I know I posted it before but I can post it again.
Great Pizza Dough
3- 4 cups bread flour with 1 teaspoon salt mixed in
1 tablespoon yeast
1 cup water;
1/4 cup water lukewarm

In a metal bowl, pour the yeast on the bottom. Add the 1/4 cup of water lukewarm let sit about 5-8 minutes.
Add less than a cup of flour and some of the water and start mixing it. Keep adding equal parts flour and water and start kneading it in the bowl. Keep doing this until all of the flour and water are in. If too dry, add a bit more water, if too sticky wet, add more flour. Keep kneeding until a nice ball of dough. Transfer to a greased bowl and cover w a dishtowel and let rise 1-2 hours. Punch down and let rise again.

I have skipped rising and the dough is fine but not as smooth to deal with when rolling out. It also stays flat when cooking and is a thin pizza. But being from Chicago, we like a thick pizza here.

[Melis]

Thanks for the pizza dough recipe, Amy! I was going to ask if anyone had a good one. We make pizza every Friday night too! It's a fun tradition in our house I've been buying the dough balls, but have been wanting to take a stab at making my own. Have you tried using whole wheat flour? What size pizza do you make? I use the Pampered Chef pizza stone...I think it's the large one, but I'm not sure! I hope it's okay to ask these questions on this thread...I'm very green...to Mothering.com and cooking, in general. I am addicted to this site

Melissa

[Jennisee]

Welcome, Melissa!

[Amys1st]

Originally Posted by Melis

Thanks for the pizza dough recipe, Amy! I was going to ask if anyone had a good one. We make pizza every Friday night too! It's a fun tradition in our house I've been buying the dough balls, but have been wanting to take a stab at making my own. Have you tried using whole wheat flour? What size pizza do you make? I use the Pampered Chef pizza stone...I think it's the large one, but I'm not sure! I hope it's okay to ask these questions on this thread...I'm very green...to Mothering.com and cooking, in general. I am addicted to this site

Melissa

I have used wheat flour as well. Normally, I do a 1:1 ratio w wheat but you could try an all wheat recipe w the recipe I posted. I usually do 2 cups wheat and 2 cups white flour if we do a wheat pizza (which we do often).

My stone is from over 13 years ago at William Sonama. DH got it for me for a birthday present back in college. We made pizza there once a week for all our roomates. Of course then he was Dboyfriend! Every Wed was 90210 and Melrose night. We made homemade pizza for a crowd and watched the shows. I guess I'm dating myself w this post!

My stone is turned a very dark shade from being seasoned. My best friend sells pampered chef and her stone is the same one and its pretty good.

Welocme to MDC and don't worry about being green just ask away!

[Emilie]

On pizza!
Good recipe here
Gloria Reed pizza
Pizza crust( homemade of store bought)
drizzle olive oil on crust
minced garlic- spread on pizza
Fresh basil
Motz cheese
parm cheese if you have it
Follow cooking directions!
YUM!
You can also top with any topping you like.

[heatherdeg]

I can't believe it's only 5 days into the month and there are 5 pages here! I forgot about this... I was going to jump in LATE last month, but decided to wait for February and then forgot!

So here's my issue... DS is allergic to a protein in dairy (casein). He was dx'd with risk signs of autism, but when we totally removed the casein from his diet, some of those signs improved... so it may be allergy-induced autism (yeah--I couldn't believe there was such a thing either!) So now we're trying to go gluten-free to see if there's further improvement.

BUT MY PANTRY IS FULL OF GLUTEN!

I hate to give all this stuff to the food bank because we're only going gluten free for 2 months and then if he doesn't show improvement, I'll be able to eat all that stuff. What do I do?

AND... I just loaded up on all kinds of flour alternatives (like potato, tapioca and rice flours). UGH!

But I could participate in this on my freezer contents alone. I have a full upright freezer in the basement full of food that needs to be eaten. So I'll likely focus on that!

[Jennisee]

Welcome, Heather! I don't think I can be much help w/ the gluten issue, but I hope you get things figured out.

[guest9969]

Wow!

I missed the new thread until now. You guys have been busy!!!

We're still keeping up with the pantry challenge but we are out of almost all the basics (milk, eggs, etc.) so I'm off to the store today for a few things. Hopefully not too much!

Glad to find you guys again. Now... off to read the old posts.

[Rainbowbird]

Originally Posted by leomom

You are so right! I have tons of baking things that I need to start using. I like homemade sweets better anyway! Thanks for the reminder. That's why I love this thread!

That's what I'm doing, too. I currently have homemade brownies, oatmeal-carrot cookies, and banana carob cookies in the freezer. When I get a craving, I take one out and thaw it in the micro. DS loves the carrot oatmeal cookies but nobody likes the banana carob! We just can't get used to carob around here!

I am planning on baking a batch of cookies, etc. every week to freeze. It's nice to have the homemade stuff to grab.

[annettemarie]

For lunch we had fettucini noodles (from the pantry) with the rest of our heavy cream from making butter on Monday and parmasan cheese- yum!
Dinner will be a roast from the freezer, green beans (hopefully they haven't gone bad), mashed potatoes, and cornbread- we read a Ramona book, and now the kids want to make cornbread!
We're having a candlelit meal and lighting all the candles we made for Candlemas this week!

Annette

[Rainbowbird]

Originally Posted by annettemarie

For lunch we had fettucini noodles (from the pantry) with the rest of our heavy cream from making butter on Monday and parmasan cheese- yum!
Dinner will be a roast from the freezer, green beans (hopefully they haven't gone bad), mashed potatoes, and cornbread- we read a Ramona book, and now the kids want to make cornbread!
We're having a candlelit meal and lighting all the candles we made for Candlemas this week!

Annette

That fettucini sounds good, Annettemarie. In fact your dinner tonight sounds awesome, too!

We are having leftover sausage rice tonight. It's a great recipe with veggies. I can post it sometime if you guys want. The base is brown rice and sweet or hot sausage and I vary the veggies.

My mini-shopping trip yesterday turned into a moderate one. Not major, but more than I intended to spend. We needed a lot of produce. I did score a bag of avocados on sale for $2! Like 5 avocados. DS eats those up like crazy. I didn't buy any junk or processed food or even meat, except for sliced turkey. Just veggies, fruit, bread, milk, cheese, Cheerios...some expensive items like coffee (actually got it on sale though) string cheese which we can't seem to do without these days. Mandarin oranges which DH requested but were also on sale. You get the idea. Suddenly it is not just Cheerios, milk and bread in my cart...it's $50 worth of groceries!

But I think this thread is helping me anyway. We don't eat out much at all--maybe once a month or even less--so I've got to have food on hand to cook and fresh fruit for DS. And ourselves, of course, I'm pregnant so need to eat well. Do I sound like I'm rationalizing here? LOL

There are a few items I need to use in my pantry:

millet
dried beans
box of Rice and Shine cereal (I keep eating oatmeal lately)
Annie's mac and cheese-keep forgetting I have it
TVP crumbles

In the freezer is a pork roast. It never comes out the way I want it to, any ideas?

[leomom]

Can't remember who posted that hummus recipe for me last month, but I just made it and mmm...it was so yummy. Thank you!

[guest9969]

Originally Posted by leomom

Can't remember who posted that hummus recipe for me last month, but I just made it and mmm...it was so yummy. Thank you!

I made hummus last night too. I keep pitas in my freezer and I defrosted some, sprinkled with olive oil, and baked until crispy and we ate the hummus on those.

[Melis]

Back to Pizza Talk...

Thanks for the welcome, Jennisee You gals are soooo inspiring to me! Not only am I trying to be "frugal", but I'm trying to incorporate more healthy food choices for our family! Babysteps...

Thanks for the pizza recipe Emilie Sounds yummy!

Amy, that's a cute story about the pizza and 90210/Melrose days! I was in college at that time as well and you brought back some fond memories. Okay, I know we are suppose to be eating out of our pantries and freezers, but Pizza Night is waaaay big in our house and I had all the ingredients except for the dough ball that I usually buy...SO - I figured it wouldn't hurt to invest in some bread flour and yeast for my pantry, especially since I just got a bread maker and would like to bake my own bread, right? Well, I just have to share with you gals how ridiculous I must have looked if anyone was working the store cameras. Not only did I decide to brave the grocery stores the day before Superbowl (baaad decision and I needed quite a few things...did I mention I really have no pantry and my freezer is pretty much empty?), but I had NO IDEA what I was doing. SO - I kept going BACK and FORTH from the Organic section and the baking section trying to decide which bread flour to buy and what yeast to get! Oh, it was stressful! I couldn't wait to get home and jump on my computer after the little guys went to sleep! I am sooooo Pantry Challenged!!!! I bought King Arthur's Unbleached Bread Flour (I was too afraid to get wheat because I wasn't sure) and bought Fleishman's Active Dry Yeast (I had no clue, but I think I got the wrong thing because it's only 3 packets which contain only 1/4 tsp. each).

My challenge for this month will be to build a well-stocked and intelligent pantry and freezer! Sounds like many of you might have used up quite a bit last month and need to re-stock so I am hoping to have jumped in at a good time

Hope everyone is off to a great weekend! It's beautiful here in NH
Melissa

[Amys1st]

Welcome Melissa!

This is a great place to learn how to stock your pantry and then use it!

http://www.organizedhome.com/content-49.html

chech out this link to get some ideas or just go to the website organizedhome.com

I also buy the king arthur flour and its the best.