Hi, I am Ranae Aspen. The purpose of this blog is to bring healthy food ideas that are simple and in-expensive to make for your family! I am passionate about helping others to live a healthy lifestyle! I hope you enjoy my blog.
Follow me on Facebook ranae.aspen@facebook.com and on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/louiseaspen/ and on twitter at @Ranaeaspen. I also am a writer on Her View From Home, http://herviewfromhome.com/
Ever had one of those weeks? You know the kind that you could not fit in one more thing on your calendar kind of weeks? It's only Wednesday and this is how it is rolling! Typically, I cave in and go to the local hot and ready pizza joint and just get through it. It came to me a long time ago that leftovers truly are a cooks creative pallet. Take tonight for instance, on the commute home, I realized I had left over wild rice, and various fresh vegetables, add some chicken and wa la, you have Cream Of Chicken and Wild Rice soup. I am going to give you the base recipe, but the best part, check out your frig for veggies that could be used in the soup and be creative! I added spinach and mushrooms to my soup.
Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice
2 medium sized chicken breasts (I keep flash frozen chicken breast on hand)
1 small chopped onion
1 medium head of cabbage, chopped
2 cups cooked wild rice
2 tsp. oregano or your favorite herbs
pepper to taste
6 to 8 cups water
4 tsp. chicken base or 4 boullion cubes
2 tbs. butter
1 tbs. olive oil or canolla oil
1/4 c. Low fat or skim milk
1. Cut chicken breasts into 1" cubes, cook on medium heat, you may want to spray botoom of stock pot with. On-stick spray so cubes do not stick. Add onions and cook till onions transclucent.
2. Add water and chicken base or boullion cubes, add rice and cook over medium high heat.
3. Melt butter and olive oil over medium heat, when butter is melted, whisk in 1/4 c. Flour to create roux. Slowly whisk in milk. Cook while stirring over medium heat for 3-5 minutes.
4. Bring chicken mixture to boil and whisk in roux. Cook until thickened to your liking.
Oregano, I grow my own and dry it. See my blog on 5/10/13. Gardening is fun and healthy too!
Roux to thicken soup, be sure to cook the flour mixture a little or it will taste pasty.
Well, there you have it! You took an otherwise ho hum leftover night and made yourself look like Julia Childs! Way to go!
Sometimes it happens, I need to fix a favorite dish from my Grandma's kitchen. Today was one of those days. Sunday was a day to take the 45 minute drive to Grandma's. Memories of card playing, singing songs but most of all the food! Here is my family's favorite meatballs and my creation of baked home fries.
Savory Meatballs
Ingredients:
Meatballs
1 1/2 pound lean ground beef
1/2 c. milk
1/2 pacakge soda crackers, crushed
Pepper to your liking
Sauce:
1 c. Ketchup
1/2 c. Water
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. worcestorshire sauce
2 tbs. vinegar
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees farenheit. Mix meat, milk, and soda crackers, form into 1 1/2" balls, place in 9x9 pan.
2. Mix sauce ingredients together and pour evenly over meatballs. Bake for 45 minutes.
Baked Home Fries
1. Spray jelly roll pan with non stick spray. Scrub potatoes with vegetable scrub brush. Cut potatoes into strips, size can be to your liking. If I am in a hurry, I cut them fairly thin. If I am going to out potates in oven with meatballs, I cut them a bit thicker so that they finish at same time as mymeatballs.
2. Lightly spray too of fries with ninstick spray, this will help to brown potatoes when baking. Sprinkle with salt or other seasonings. I like chili on the fries or garlic powder.
**Be creative! I guarantee you will like them better than fast food fries!
History lesson from my blog, yes, I am from Nebraska. So, when I say, we don't normally have salmon on our table, I am being honest. This time of year, it is within my budget to step outside of my comfort zone of tried and true recipes and be bold and serve fish. One fish I have come to like is Salmon. It is heart healthy and known to be high in omega 3 and of course protein. Also, here is one of my favorite things, it is so very easy and quick to cook! I admit, I have not attempted this in quite a long time, so I went to my favorite site, http://allrecipes.com/ and found a recipe that I altered to fit our taste and before I prepared the recipe, I found this video on youtube
Broiled Salmon Nebraska Style
1 clove garlic chopped
2 tbs. olive oil
4 (6 ounce) salmon fillets (In Nebraska, it is less expensive to buy in frozen section versus fresh)
1/4 c. butter
2 tbs. worcestershire sauce
2 tbs. fresh lemon juice
1/4 c. wine
1 tsp. black pepper
1 1/2 tsp. fresh herbs ( thyme, rosemary and oregano)
1/4 c. chopped dill (fresh or dried either kind works well)
1. Preheat oven's broiler and set the oven rack about 6 inches from heat source. Use a broiler pan and spray with non-stick spray or line a jelly roll pan with aluminum foil and spray with nonstick spray.
2. Heat small saucepan over medium heat, add olive oil and the chopped clove of garlic. Cook till tender, add butter and melt. Remove from heat and add the rest of the ingredients except the dill.
3. Place salmon with skin side down on prepared pan. Spoon about 1/3 of the sauce over the salmon. Sprinkle the dill evenly over the salmon.
4. Broil in preheated oven for 3 minutes. Turn the fillets to place the opposite side facing up; spoon on the remaining butter sauce; broil until the fish flakes easily with a fork, approximately 3 additional minutes.
5. Squeeze remaining lemon juice over top of the salmon and serve piping hot.
***Nebraska twist: instead of butter sauce, try your favorite barbecue sauce, everything tastes great with barbecue sauce! When the weather is warm and the grill is running, I love to grill salmon and marinate with barbecue sauce, try it, you may just find that you have a new fish dish that you love, and it is heart healthy too!
I decided it was time to go back to the roots of my blog, eating healthy on a tight budget. I began this journey in 2012. In 2012, our family felt the increase in food prices and I am not sure it has changed much. I will say, with technology, there are some ways you can simplify making sure you are getting the best deals on groceries. With a little planning and the desire to cook, you can eat healthy and not break the bank doing it! Let's do a review and look at grocery adds, couponing and perhaps more improtantly, meal planning. Statistics tell us that we throw away huge amounts of food due to not using the food before it goes bad, so we are also going to look at creative ways to use leftovers. Let's get started!
Grocery adds, this can be overwhelming! This is where you may want to look at technology. There are a few apps for Smart Phones that are helpful. Here are a few that I am aware of: RETALE is an app that will conect you with local adds. I found it interesting that when I downloaded this app and opened it for the first time, at the top of the list was adds for local rent to own places. The moral of this, you have to keep scrolling! Rent to own stores include a huge interest rate on items and you end up paying twice as much for home furnishings an electronics. This app is great if you just open it up for the grocery adds and then plan. Various stores have apps of there own. Target has Cartwheel along with signing up for special text messaging. Again, you will want to be sure to plan first, opening it up at the store is sometimes difficult. It does have a scan mechanism that allows you to scan the product to see if it is discounted or if something similar is discounted. It has been my experience that I need to take a look at the discounts on the app before I go to the store, it saves me time and avoids me purchasing items that I do not need. My best recommendation is that if you shop at a national retailer, you may want to go to your app store and see if there are any apps specific to that store. Typically, if you shop at a store, specials rotate. For an example, my local store that I frequent will have meat on sale one week and it will then it will go on sale again in 4 to 6 weeks. That being said, what I tend to do is look at the store add, check my stock of items that are on sale and if I find I am low on certain things such as frozen vegetables, they go on my list. Oh the list, I have a terrible time finding the notorious list when I need it! There are apps for this too! I use one called "Out of Milk" it can create more than one list, this is nice as I can make a list for a specific store to be sure I don't miss a special. Also, it has a handy to do list feature. Also, it does have local adds built into it. If you find a product that you need, it will add it to your list.
Couponing is another area that you can save money. This is successful if you are a planner and live in an area that you have access to big stores that may offer store coupons, double and triple coupon options. I like to stress though, be sure to check store brands as sometimes they are less expensive even if you are using a coupon for the national brand. Coupons for items you would not typically buy can cost you more money at the store. You have to really use your common sense and not allow the magical new product to catch your eye and you must try! I do think it is good to try new things, but remember to do it minimally so that it does not end up costing you a lot of money. Don't forget to compare unit pricing. This is very important to slow down and get into the practice of comparing unit prices so you are getting the best buy. Check out this video on unit pricing.
Meal Planning is vital piece to all of this. I am going to combine this area with using leftovers as you can successfully achieve this with a little planning. I saved this step after the grocery adds and couponing because I develop my meal planning around sales as well as knowing what I have on hand in my freezer and in my pantry. The first thing you need for successful planning is a visual of Choose MyPlate. It is important to be sure you fit in all of the food groups into your daily diet.
The smallest portion on your plate is protein. Now there is good news! Meat is the most expensive thing in your grocery basket. You only need 5 1/2 ounces daily of protein. A serving size is 3 ounces. One example I use in my kitchen, when I am making a mexican dish, I use refried beans and hamburger for an example in enchilladas. I use 1/2 as much hamburger when I also include beans. I am still giving everyone 3 ounces of protein, but I am spending less money on the dish. Next up is dairy, adults need 3 cups of low-fat, non-fat dairy and kids until they are 9 years old need 2 cups of low-fat, non-fat milk (toddlers age 1-2 need whole milk, the extra fat content is necessary for good development of brain). Grains, ahh the grain group! 6 ounces daily and half of your grains need to be whole. Whole? How do I know if a grain is whole? You will need to check the label. Check out this helpful tip sheet on whole grains,
Fruit, the recommendation is 2 cups of fruit per day. A medium apple, medium banana and a medium orange are exampels of what would be considered a cup of fruit. It is important to note that 100% fruit juice is high in natural sugar, so this should be kept to 6 to 8 ounces only daily. While it has vitamins and minerals, it has sugar which can cause dental health problems. Finally, vegetables and we need 2 1/2 cups daily. The key to fruits and vegetables is that you vary the colors that you have so that you insure a variety of vitamins and minerals in your diet. That is a lot to process, I know! Now that you know what you need on your plate, you can begin to plan.
The first step is to know what you already have in stock. I then make a list (currently, this is an on-going list that I add to) of items I am lacking. For an example, if I look at my freezer and I only have a pound of hamburger (this is a typical item I use for meals) I put this on my list. I do this for all of the food groups. I then look at the adds in my local area and begin to see what items are on sale and where. Next up is shopping. I follow the usual hints, things like only go to the store once a week or even once every two weeks, go on a full stomach and I do find it best to shop by myself. If I do shop with my family, I keep them busy comparing prices and I stress that we have to stick with what is on the list.
Finally, a word about leftovers, if you are planning to have a baked chicken on Sunday, then have a plan for Monday. This is a great time to reduce your food prep on Monday. I like to take the rest of the chicken off the bone, and put together a slow cook meal or a one pot 30 minute meal. Tune in for future blogs on this topic!
If you are successful at planning and remember the improtant food groups to include in your daily diet, you will save money at the store and you will enjoy a healthy lifestyle! Don't forget to treat yourself to at least 30 minutes of exercise, and you will be a Rock Star!
