Menu & Grocery list for 12/1-12/7

After all the Thanksgiving planning and preparation I had to take a little break from meal planning for a bit, but I’m back on the horse this week. There seem to be lots of exciting wintery-sounding things on sale, too.

Roast beef with scallion-caper green sauce and roasted cauliflower: actually, I’m not sure if I’ll make the green sauce or not. The last time I needed capers for something they were really expensive and it’s not that crucial. Especially with roasted cauliflower. Roast beef is on sale at Ray’s and cauliflower at Safeway.

Herb-roasted eggplant with tomatoes and feta: Eggplant is also on sale at Safeway this week. I think we’ll have this with pasta rather than couscous though.

Pork chops with mashed acorn squash : this is a recipe from the November Everyday Food magazine. Though they made it to go with a pork loin, chops seem to be on sale all over the place and I have two acorn squashes I need to bake.

Chicken (noodle?) soup: I made lots chicken and turkey broth in preparation for Thanksgiving, but ended up having quite a bit left over so I’ll make more soup with some of the odds & ends in the refrigerator and pantry like leftover kale, extra herbs, white beans, etc..

Broccoli and tofu with peanut sauce: we’ll have this over rice–broccoli is yet another winter veggie on sale at Safeway this week.

That’s only five meals, but we have a lot of friends headed out of town this week so we’ll probably have at least one group meal to send everyone off in style. Since we haven’t really been to the grocery store since Thanksgiving we are out of lots of staples too.

Grocery list:
milk
1/2 & 1/2
yogurt
feta

bread
oatmeal

broccoli
cauliflower
eggplant
tomatoes (maybe canned?)
green onions (1 bunch)
celery
carrots
pears
garlic
persimmons–in season, on sale at Ray’s and so good

beef roast
pork chops
tofu

olive oil
brown sugar
Pantry items:
acorn squash, onions, rice, pasta, sour cream, parsley, all the peanut sauce ingredients

Hm. That seems like a short list, but I think that’s it. Maybe I will buy the capers.

Just in case you needed a(nother) reason not to eat at Burger King

In addition to the impact big agriculture has on the nutritional value of our food and its impact on the environment, it also has a serious human impact on the people who work to move the food from the fields to the table. It can be easy to forget this sometimes, but Eric Schlosser’s editorial about tomato pickers in Florida in today’s New York Times is an unforgettable reminder of the real work that goes into food production as well as the true costs of cheap food. The article outlines a refusal by the Burger King Corporation to pay just one cent per pound more for the tomatoes they buy, a refusal that also undermined agreements Taco Bell and McDonald’s had made to pay the penny a pound.

While my first reaction to the behavior of both the tomato growers and to the Burger King Corporation was disgust, the well-developed skeptic in me wanted more information. Schlosser’s article raised some questions, so I spent some time this evening reading about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that has been working for almost 15 years to improve the working and living conditions of low-wage workers (mostly farmworkers, mostly immigrants) in Florida. I also spent some time looking at the webpage for the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange. It’s hard to know what to believe, but it’s very hard to believe that it’s “not about the money,” as Burger King officials claim in this Miami Herald article. It also seems highly unlikely that the legal problems cited by Burger King and the Growers Exchange went unnoticed by Taco Bell and McDonald’s when they agreed to the 1-cent per pound increase earlier in the year. It’s perhaps hardest to believe that last year’s average hourly wage for Florida tomato pickers was $12.46 an hour. It seems unlikely folks making that kind of wage with any regularity would find it worthwhile to fight for an increase of $.01/lb.. The PR put out by the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange was enough to make me dig deeper, and I’m sure I still don’t have the whole story, but something about their story just isn’t right. The only thing I’m fairly certain about is that fast food just isn’t worth it.

I think the greed upsets my stomach more than the grease.

Cocoa season

Given my foodie tendencies you might suspect my hot chocolate is of the gourmet persuasion. While I won’t claim this is never the case, more often than not my hot chocolate is of the blue can persuasion. And it’s usually the “no sugar added” variety to boot.

While I know there are many folks who don’t do artificial sweeteners, I am not one of them. I am the child (and grandchild, both sides!) of a dentist; I grew up on this stuff and have lived to tell the tale. I was disappointed when Swiss Miss started to use Splenda instead of NutraSweet, but I still prefer the taste of the no sugar added cocoa mix to the regular kind. Also, one serving is only about 50 calories and has 30% of the US RDA of calcium.

The super-processed big agriculture nature of instant hot chocolate mix does nag at me a little. I’m thinking I’d like to try making my own from organic powdered milk though I’ll likely still use a sugar substitute. Hey, I’m a Gemini, I’m allowed to contradict myself regularly.

Whether you go with a mix or do the real milk thing, hot chocolate is fun to fancy up. Beyond the traditional marshmallows (see, I’m not anti-sugar) it’s likely you have a few things in your pantry that taste really good in your cocoa. One of the easiest add-ins is cinnamon, a cheater-version of Mexican hot chocolate. A little ground cinnamon goes a long ways, and it works best if you add it to the cocoa before pouring the liquid in. A small zest of orange rind in the bottom of the cup is a nice treat, and if you happen to have peppermint extract, adding a tiny drop plus some vanilla will make candy cane hot cocoa.

Now I’m going to check on the snow piling up outside…I think I’m finally ready for winter!

Make your own: teriyaki sauce

While I am not a big fan of sweet stuff on my meat, Jeff loves it. Barbecue sauce, maple syrup, honey, jam–you name it and he’s probably tried to broil it on a chicken breast or grill it on a pork chop.

If we don’t have dinner planned yet (hey, it happens) Jeff will inevitably suggest “chickie-rice,” his name for the chicken, rice, and teriyaki sauce combo you can pick up from any bento place. While we had made this dish at home before with purchased teriyaki sauce, it never occurred to me that the sauce itself was incredibly simple to make until we finished off the seemingly-bottomless bottle of it in our fridge.

Teriyaki Sauce from Recipezaar

1/4 soy sauce
1 T. grated ginger
3 T. brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T. cornstarch

Combine everything but the cornstarch in a small saucepan with 1 c. water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Stir the cornstarch into 1/4 c. cold water and whisk into sauce, cooking until thickened.

The recipe makes two cups of teriyaki sauce. You can adjust the sugar, ginger, etc. to taste, and thin the sauce out with more water or soy sauce if you need to. Now you can spend the $4 you would have spent on the sauce on something else!

(A note about fresh ginger: I think I have mentioned this before, but I keep ginger in my freezer in a ziploc bag. It’s really easy to peel a section and grate it with my microplane grater when it’s frozen, and this means I always have it on hand.)

Do vegetables bust your grocery budget?

Back in June I wondered where our grocery budget actually went, what proportion of it went for meat compared to produce compared to dairy, etc.. I kept track in July and discovered that it was, in fact, produce that ate up the largest chunk of our budget, averaging just under 35% of our total grocery expenditures for the month.

I used to be the “salad girl” at work–I ate a salad for lunch almost every day, topped with some kind of fat and protein (chicken, nuts, cheese, olives, etc.) for some staying power. I grew up eating salad with dinner pretty much every night. It sounds weird to say it, but I have actually intentionally cut back on my salad consumption in an effort to eat more seasonally, locally, and affordably.

Even with this change in diet we are still very lucky to eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables; in July we purchased and ate 27 different kinds of produce ranging from the most expensive item, a 20 lb. Oregon-grown watermelon that cost $6, to several items that were under $1 like sprouts, green onions, and even tomatoes (ah, summer!) The variety and relative affordability of produce is not something I take for granted. It’s one of the many reasons I love living in the Pacific Northwest.

All this thinking about produce was triggered by a MedlinePlus article about Americans’ ability to afford a healthy diet that caught my eye this morning. I didn’t even realize there were new dietary guidelines that suggest nine servings (about 4.5 cups) of fruits and vegetables a day. For some folks, according to the article, following this guideline could mean spending up to an unrealistic 70% of their food budget on produce. When dietary guidelines are this out of reach for some people it makes it a little hard to take them seriously.

Nevertheless, in addition to paying more attention to my calcium intake, I’m going to pay closer attention to my servings of fruits and vegetables as well. I’ll keep an eye out for any great deals on (hopefully organic) produce and I’ll keep you posted.

The answers to your questions

I am consistently amused by the search terms I see leading folks to my posts. Since librarians hate to see a search go unrequited I’m going to answer a few of the questions that people have searched for that I know weren’t answered by the posts that people found.

“jello cheesecake + vegan”: ummm….sorry, no. Either you’re not familiar with where Jell-o comes from or you’re not totally clear on veganism. There are some recipes out there for vegan “cheese”cake though.

“is there cholesterol in blackberry jam”: good news for you–cholesterol comes from animal products, so the answer is no.

“cranberry sauce stains on tablecloths” : while I haven’t specifically tried this with cranberry sauce, boiling water is an incredibly easy way to remove berry stains in general. Just heat a kettle of water and pour it through the stain–the berry spots disappear like magic.

So, I realize this may be a little late for the folks who searched originally, but now the answers are here the next time someone comes searching. If you’re reading this hoping to find an answer to a question I didn’t answer then let me suggest getting in touch with your local library–many libraries even have 24/7 online reference help where librarians will help you find the answers to your questions. Seriously, we live for this stuff.

The leftovers are long-gone

After just one round of turkey sandwiches we’re down to carcass.

I’m surprised, but not too disappointed. I think this article from Slate is dead-on; leftover turkey is best reserved for sandwiches and soup. I stewed the bones and picked off the remaining bits of meat tonight for some carcass soup (yup, that’s what we call it. Sorry vegetarians….)

If you have a spaghetti pot, one of those with the colander-type insert that goes in a large stock pot, it also happens to double as a really good way to make turkey (or chicken) soup. You can boil the bones, then lift them out of the hot liquid to cool for a bit so you can pick the meat off without burning your fingers or worrying that you might have left any choking hazards lurking.

Though we sometimes make the traditional turkey noodle version, this year’s soup needs to be gluten-free so I think I will make another favorite variety–tortilla soup. I’ll need to pick up some cans of green chilis and maybe an avocado, but I think I have everything else I need to put together this after-Thanksgiving tradition.

And now I need to figure out a menu and grocery list for next week….

White? What were you thinking?

I don’t usually keep a tablecloth on the table. First, the table is usually covered with books and papers. Also, the cat thinks our table has been strategically placed so he can both lie down and look out the window and a tablecloth covered in cat fur is really, really gross. However, I do own some white tablecloths I like to use for Thanksgiving. Yes, white.

Four years ago, when getting ready to serve my first Thanksgiving I bought a long, white, 100% cotton hotel-style tablecloth. While white might seem like a poor choice, I would buy it again in a second. Luckily, I don’t need to because the original still looks great. This is not because we haven’t had our share of red wine spills, gravy dribbles, and other potentially tablecloth-ruining dining disasters. I even had a big puddle of spilled candle wax to deal with this morning, but the tablecloth always seems to come through unscathed.

When I googled “remove wax from tablecloth” I found lots of advice and most of it was pretty similar: get any excess wax off with a butter knife, then put something absorbent on both sides of the wax spot and heat with the iron until the wax melts out. Most people suggest using a brown paper bag, and a few recommend using cloth. One smart suggestion was to use unprinted paper towels. This made the most sense to me; to use a brown paper bag you have to find an unprinted section and then cut it down to size, and using cloth seemed silly since you’re just left with more wax-soaked cloth. Plain white paper towels, on the other hand, worked perfectly. I just folded up two paper towels to go between the cloth and the ironing board and two paper towels to go between the iron and the cloth. I put the iron on a medium setting with no steam and just let the heat saturate the paper towels and the tablecloth. When I was finished I could still see the spot where the wax had been, but the cloth was no longer stiff.

I treated the other stains with Shout and tossed the tablecloth into a hot wash with my regular detergent and about 1/4 c. bleach. When the cycle was finished I couldn’t even figure out where the wax had been (or any of the other stains.) The tablecloth will live to see another Thanksgiving.

Dinner, documented

Food was cooked, food was eaten:

Dishes were washed:

Dessert is in process:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving plan of action, part five: timeline

There’s nothing like a good list to make something look do-able.  Or to highlight insanity. My mom is actually making the cranberry sauce/relish because she was able to get local Oregon coast cranberries and all I could find were Ocean Spray, otherwise that would be on the list for today as well.

Today:
Cook rice for stuffing
Bake pies, cake
Make turkey stock
Make pumpkin hummus
Iron napkins, tablecloths
Put green beans in fridge to thaw

Tomorrow
9am
Vegetable prep: chop onions, celery, mushrooms

10am
Make vegan “meatloaf”
Make mushroom gravy

11am
Peel potatoes, put in pot with cold water
Peel & cube sweet potatoes
Prep turkey with herbs, etc.

Noon
Turkey in oven
Steam sweet potatoes
Assemble stuffing & green bean casserole

1pm
Put out appetizers

2pm
Cook regular potatoes
Bake green bean casserole & stuffing (in neighbor’s oven if turkey is not finished)
Make turkey gravy

2:30
Put side dishes & vegan main dish in oven to keep warm/re-heat
Heat mushroom gravy
Mash potatoes
Make Brussels sprouts
Carve Turkey (Jeff & Joe)

3pm
Serve Dinner

6pm
Dessert
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I suspect I’ll be back to update a few times with the things I have forgotten….