Thursday's Thrift in the Kitchen

Planning Ahead

Although I don't make a month long (or even a week long) menu plan I do tend to plan ahead on a regular basis. I'll explain, and show you what I mean.

Last night we had hamburgers (from the patties I made and froze last week), and oven fries. I made lots of fries so I'd have enough leftovers to make Breakfast Salad this morning.

Planning ahead to use up leftovers is a way to save money in the kitchen.

Oven Fries
8 medium potatoes, cut into eight wedges each

Mix together in a small bowl or measuring cup:
1/4 cup oil (your choice, I use canola and/or olive)
1/2 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, onion powder, paprika
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese

Place potato wedges in a large bowl, pour oil mixture over the wedges, stir to coat all the potatoes. Place the wedges on a large baking sheet in a single layer.
Bake at 375 for 50-60 minutes (depends on the thickness of the wedges and the heat of your oven)

Breakfast Salad (basic version)
Brown a small amount of bulk sausage (I use about 1/4 to 1/3 of a pound) in a large skillet
Cut up leftover oven fries and add to the browned sausage
In a separate pan, scramble two eggs; add to the sausage and potatoes.

If you have more time adding chopped onions and various colors of bell peppers adds lovely flavor and color to the salad. This is one of those expandable recipes. For large families or other crowds, just increase the quantities of each ingredient, or add something that you like or have on hand. A salad is simply a collection of ingredients, it can be whatever you like. Experiment and have fun!

Thursday's Thrift in the Kitchen

Processing Bulk Buys

Buying twenty pounds of ground beef isn't very thrifty if left in the ten pound tubes, they're too difficult to use. But I learned something from one time of leaving a tube in the fridge for a while. (Sometimes I'm a slow learner.) What I learned is that I can pre-cook the meat and store it in the freezer for almost instant meals. Now that's thrifty.

This time I did half and half. I determined ahead of time what I wanted:

3 lb. made into patties
4 lb. in 2 packages for meatloaf
3 lb. in 3 packages for casseroles

4 lb. cooked with chopped onion put into 1/2# packages
6 lb. made into meatballs, cooked and packaged 2 dozen meatballs in a package

crumbled ground beef with onion

Meatball mix

Meatballs ready for baking

Baked Meatballs

They didn't come out quite even dozens, so I made one small package, perhaps for when it is just TopDad and I.

Recipe for Baked Meatballs

1 lb. ground beef

1 egg

2 tablespoons water

1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used homemade bread crumbled in a blender)

1/4 cup minced onion (this time I used dried onion powder)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Mix all together and form 1" balls (a cookie scoop works great), place on a cooking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

When they were finished I scraped all the lovely drippings up along with the meatballs into the containers to freeze for the added flavor.

Thursday's Thrift in the Kitchen

Patience Rewarded

The other day TopDad got into the chest freezer for something and reported to me that it was looking kind of humble in there. In other words, stocks are low. That's because I've been waiting for the right sale to fill it up again.

This is the sale I've been waiting for. I bought two tubes, one for making burger patties, and two pound packages for meatloaf. The other tube I'll be making meatballs, and frying the ground beef with onion for taco meat, or for adding to spaghetti sauce, and such. The ol' chest freezer won't be so humble when I get done with all of that.

Patiently waiting for the thing you need to go on sale will save you money! Remember to use it up, and make do!