Frugal Fridays - Soup, Bread, and Dessert

Our menu this evening consists of a deliciously flavorful Garden Fresh Lentil Soup, served with French Bread. Dessert is Peanut Pistachio Pudding and Crackers.

Since this post is being submitted to Frugal Fridays, here is the price breakdown:

Lentils - 1/2 lb. - $0.35
Bacon - 1/2 lb. - $0.50
Flour - 4 cups - $0.45
Yeast - 2 1/4 tsp. - $0.17
Graham crackers - 1 sleeve - $0.40
Peanut butter - 1/4 cup - $0.20
Milk - 1 cup - $0.27
Pudding - 3.4-oz box - $0.75

Squash and tomatoes - free from parents' garden
Chicken broth - free from boiling chicken
Seasonings and simple pantry staples - negligible price

Total price: $3.09



Garden Fresh Lentil Soup


1/2 lb. lentils
Water
1/2 lb. bacon
1 large yellow squash
1/4 cup onion
2 large tomatoes
2 cups chicken broth
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Cover lentils with water (about 3 or 4 cups). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer until tender.

While the lentils are simmering, cook bacon over medium heat until it reaches desired crispiness. Remove bacon from skillet (leave drippings in skillet) and set aside. Chop squash and saute in bacon drippings. Remove from pan and set aside. Chop onion and saute in remaining bacon drippings. Set aside. Chop tomatoes.

Check on lentils. When they are tender, add chicken broth (my lentils had cooked off all the water. If there is water left when the lentils are done, drain it off before adding broth). Stir in vegetables and seasonings. Heat through. Garnish with bacon and serve.

The great thing about the end of summer is all the fresh garden produce available. Use what is growing, and you can eat delicious and nutritious foods, like this soup, for incredibly cheap.

I only included bacon in this recipe because it was a manager's special and we got it for a dollar per pound. Normally we don't have bacon. This soup is delicious without it, but incredible with it!



Bread Machine French Bread


1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. oil
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
4 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp. yeast

Place ingredients in bread machine in order suggested by manufacturer. If your machine has a setting for French Bread, select that. Otherwise, set it for basic. Once the machine is set, forget about it until it beeps at you to tell you it's done!



Peanut Pistachio Pudding and Crackers


Approximately 1 sleeve graham crackers
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 cup milk
1 3.4-oz box instant pistachio pudding mix

Place graham crackers along bottom of 8- or 9-inch pan, breaking crackers as needed to cover the pan. I did two layers of crackers. Next time I might do one layer, then the pudding layer, then a second cracker layer on top. Either way. Set aside.

Place peanut butter in mixing bowl. Add milk and whisk until combined. Add pudding mix and whisk for 2 minutes. Spread on top of graham crackers. Chill for a couple hours, then cut into squares and serve.


The dessert isn't much to look at. I originally planned on using chocolate or vanilla pudding, but when I checked the cupboard this evening all we had was pistachio. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but gave it a try anyway. It turned out delicious.

One Good Meal, Two Blogging Events

Today being Friday, it's time for yet another installment of Frugal Fridays. This is also my entry for my first Taste&Create event. A quick description of Taste&Create - those who want to participate e-mail the founder and administrator of Taste&Create. She matches up all the entries so each person has a partner blog. Then you get to select a recipe from your partner's blog to make and post about. They in turn choose something from your blog and do the same thing.

My partner is [eating club] vancouver, a blog created by sisters TS and JS. I had such a difficult time choosing a recipe to make! The blog is full of delicious-looking recipes, but so many call for seafood and other exotic-to-me ingredients. But after a great deal of perusing (and drooling all over my keyboard, might I add), I was able to find several recipes I could actually afford to make. I showed them to Jeff and he helped me to pick the official Taste&Create recipe for this month - Curried (Easter) Egg Salad. There are definitely other recipes I want to try very soon (Cheesecake-Marbled Brownies, anyone?), but the deliciously unique egg salad is my actual entry.

And you have to have something to serve your egg salad on, right? At first I wanted to make pita pockets, but changed my mind when I found a really awesome recipe for Savory Pull-Apart Loaf. This will be one bread I'll make again and again. It was delicious and fun to make. When you see the loaf, you'll groan at what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyway: It's the best thing since sliced bread.

And for dessert, a simple yet delicious pineapple sorbet.

Ingredient Prices:
Eggs, 4 - $0.52
Celery, 1/2 stalk - $0.10
Mayonnaise, 1/4 cup - $0.11
Milk, 1 cup - $0.27
Butter, 2 tbsp. - $0.13
Flour, 3 1/2 cups - $0.37
Yeast, 2 tsp. - $0.15
Pineapple, 1 20-oz. can - $1.00

Ingredients with negligible price:
Curry powder (this came free, it was given to us)
Dry parsley
Salt and pepper
Sugar
Green onions (from garden)
One tiny little garden tomato, and one cherry, for garnish

Total Price: $2.65


Curried Egg Salad

3 eggs
1 tsp. curry powder
1/2 stalk celery, chopped
1 tbsp. dry parsley (I didn't have the cilantro called for, but that would be delicious!)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
I also added some sliced green pepper from our garden

Boil the eggs: set in saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a rolling boil, then shut off the heat and cover the pan. Let sit for about 20 minutes. Then run the eggs under cold water until they're cooled enough to peel.

Coarsely chop eggs, then combine with remaining ingredients, and chill until serving.

Before stirring - beautiful!

After stirring - gooey and delicious!

Served nestled in lettuce atop a slice of homemade bread, this unique and flavorful egg salad completely hit the spot!



Savory Pull-Apart Loaf

1 cup milk
1 tsp. salt
1 egg
2 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (I substituted in 3/4 cup whole wheat flour)
1 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. active dry yeast

About 3 tbsp. Italian seasoning
1 tbsp. olive oil

Place 1st seven ingredients in bread machine in order specified by owner's manual. Program machine to dough cycle (or remove after first rise).

Grease 9x5-inch loaf pan; set aside. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface. Divide dough into 16 equal pieces. Form each piece into ball. Cover with clean towel; let rest 5 minutes.

Flatten each ball into 4x3-inch oval. Coat both sides of dough with olive oil. Sprinkle one side of each dough oval with rounded 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning.

Stand loaf pan on short end. Lay one piece of dough, herb-covered side down, in pan. Stack remaining 15 pieces of dough in pan so that herb-covered sides of dough are touching sides of dough not covered with herb mixture. (They look a little like pancakes, don't they?)

You can see that my pieces of dough were rolled a bit too thin - they didn't quite fill the pan.

With a little creative squishing and scooting, I got the dough to fill the pan.

Cover with towel; let rise in warm place 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake 35 minutes or until top of loaf is golden. Immediately remove bread from pan and cool on wire rack.


These separate into individual pieces easier if you pull them apart while the bread is still fresh and warm. The longer you wait to separate them, the more difficult it is. Also, make sure you coat the pieces of dough really well with oil, all the way to the edges, to keep the pieces from sticking together.

Like I said, the best thing since sliced bread! :-)


Pineapple Sorbet

1 can (about 20 ounces) pineapple chunks (or crushed pineapple) packed in juice

At least a few hours before you want to eat this, open the can of pineapple. Pour into a large, flat freezer-safe container. Freeze until solid.

When you're ready to make your sorbet, take the fruit out of the freezer and let it sit out for 10 minutes to soften a little. Break up into chunks, and put chunks in food processor. Process until it is creamy.

The best part about this entire menu is that it's all make-ahead! This evening when I decided it was time for dinner, all I had to do was set the table and say, "Dinner time!" All the work - baking the bread, preparing the egg salad, and freezing the pineapple - had already been done. That's my kind of meal!

Frugal Fridays - Fourth of July!

Today was neat, since not only is it the Fourth of July, but it's also Friday, which means I got to plan a Frugal Fridays meal. This is pretty much what we would have eaten anyway, but it's fun to go through the ingredients and see exactly how much this meal cost us.

Once again (unplanned) we ended up making a meal with chicken, a salad, and a starch. Tonight we tried to keep the heat out of the kitchen, because today was HOT! Our meal featured: Grilled Lemon Chicken, a deliciously marinated main dish; Tangy Potato Salad, using microwaved potatoes and cheese instead of boiled eggs; and Dinner Rolls made from bread machine French bread dough, left over from lunch today (the heat the oven created when we made these this afternoon is the biggest reason we decided not to heat up the kitchen this evening).


Prices of ingredients, in order of appearance:
Lemon juice - 1/4 cup + 1 tsp. - $0.21
Chicken leg quarters - 1 lb. - $0.50
Potatoes - 3 - $0.40
Celery - 2 stalks - $0.20
Monterey jack - 2 oz. - $0.60
Mayonnaise - 1/2 cup - $0.22
Flour - 3 1/2 cups - $0.45
Yeast - 1 tbsp. - $0.20

Total Price - $2.78, but some of that shouldn't really count. We only ate four rolls tonight, but the recipe makes 12 and some were consumed earlier today for lunch. Even so, definitely under $10!

When you buy yeast in bulk (such as at WinCo), it is so very much cheaper than buying it in a jar, or (gag) in those dumb little packets. I don't recall the exact price per ounce that we got, but it was less than 20 cents. So I'm probably overestimating to say that our tablespoon of yeast (just over one ounce) cost that much.

Grilled Lemon Chicken

1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp. lemon extract
1 tsp. vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. onion salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
4 chicken pieces (we used 2 leg quarters, separated)

In a small bowl, combine all ingredients except chicken. Place chicken in quart-sized ziploc bag, pour marinade over the chicken. Refrigerate at least 3 hours, turning bag over every so often to make sure all the chicken gets marinated.

Grill chicken over medium coals for 45 minutes, turning and basting frequently.

Tangy Potato Salad

3 medium potatoes
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 oz. Monterey jack cheese, diced
1/3 to 1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp. mustard
1 tbsp. dill relish
Salt and pepper to taste

In order to keep from heating up the kitchen, I microwave-cooked the potatoes. I think this would have turned out with a better texture had I boiled them. So cut the potatoes into chunks and boil them until done. Drain and cool. Add celery and cheese.

In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients, then fold gently into potato mixture. Chill until serving. Garnish with some paprika if desired.

French Bread Rolls

1 1/4 cups warm water

1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp. active dry yeast

Place ingredients in bread pan of bread machine in order recommended by manufacturer. Set machine to dough cycle, or remove after first rise.

Place dough on lightly floured surface. Divide into 12 pieces. Shape each rolls. Place on greased baking sheet, cover and let rise in a warm place until double in size.

Bake at 400 degrees 15 to 20 minutes or until done.

Bread Machine French Bread Hot Dog Buns

Hot Dogs seem to go with Fourth of July like apples go with pie. We had hot dogs for lunch, and though we didn't break out the grill (we're saving that for tonight), they were a delicious treat with these homemade buns.

Bread Machine French Bread Hot Dog Buns
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp. active dry yeast

Place ingredients in bread pan of bread machine in order recommended by manufacturer. Set machine to dough cycle, or remove after first rise.

Place dough on lightly floured surface. Divide into 12 pieces. Shape each piece into a hot dog shape (or whatever shape you want. We did some as regular dinner rolls). Place on greased baking sheet, cover and let rise in a warm place until double in size.

Bake at 400 degrees 15 to 20 minutes or until done.

Slice through horizontally almost all the way (just like packaged buns) and serve with hot dogs and condiments.

Surprise Tuna Salad on Gannat (French Cheese Bread)

I started making this bread this afternoon, just for the sake of baking something. I had been looking through old posts on our family blog, and came across one where I said how excited I was to have purchased a bread machine recipe book at a yard sale. I was like, "Huh? I don't remember that!" I had to go check my cookbooks, and sure enough, there it was. So I flipped through and found this yummy looking recipe for Gannat, or French Cheese Bread. We had all the ingredients, so I started it up.

Later this evening, Jeff took the kids to the library so I could have some "me time." As he was leaving, I said I'd try to figure something out for dinner, and he suggested "something with tuna." We have a huge pile of tuna in the pantry, and try to prepare meals with it frequently. I immediately thought of making a tuna salad to go on the fresh loaf of bread.


I came across this great recipe at allrecipes.com. I changed it around a bit, as I am prone to do, based on the ingredients I had and what I was in the mood for. And here's what I came up with.

Surprise Tuna Salad
1 (6 oz) can tuna, drained and flaked
1/2 medium apple, peeled and chopped (I used red delicious)
1/4 cup raisins (the recipe calls for golden, but I used regular)
2 tbsp. mayonnaise
2 tbsp. Italian dressing
1 1/2 tsp. sweet relish
3 slices bread
6 slices mozzarella cheese

Combine first six ingredients. Chill until serving. Spread 1/3 of mixture on each slice of bread; top each with 2 slices cheese.


Gannat (French Cheese Bread)
3 tbsp. water
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup butter, cut up, softened
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. sugar (I realized later that I forgot the sugar. It still worked fine)
1 cup (4 oz) shredded cheddar or Swiss cheese
2 tsp. active dry yeast

Measuring carefully, place all ingredients in bread machine pan in order specified by owner's manual.

Here you have two options:
1. Program basic or white cycle and desired crust setting; press start. When bread is baked, remove from pan; cool on wire rack.
OR
2. Program dough setting; press start. When dough is completed remove from pan and let rest covered for five minutes (if your machine does not have a dough setting, remove after first rise). Shape into round loaf and place in greased 8-inch pan. Cover and let rise until doubled. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Remove from pan; cool on wire rack.

Jeff's Cheater Pizza Crust

We decided to make pizza for dinner last night. I was totally going to make the pizza crust from Michelle's food blog, but Jeff forced me to take a much-needed nap while he took care of dinner.

Enter the bread machine.

Jeff, I think, has a phobia of making bread without this invaluable appliance. The mixing, kneading, and rising are just too complicated when there's not a machine to do it for him. I don't mind, though, because having the bread machine encourages Jeff to make bread frequently, and it does turn out quite good. The pizza he made is no exception.
I've found that this dough rolls out MUCH easier if you let it sit in the bread machine for 5-10 minutes after it's done rising. Without this important step, the dough just snaps back into shape every time you try to flatten it, and it takes much longer, and a lot more work. So after my nap, I rolled out the crust, and put the pizza together with all the toppings that Jeff had prepared. And the pizza turned out great!Bread Machine Pizza Crust
3/4 cup warm water (80 degrees)
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. oil
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. dry milk
2 1/4 cups bread flour (we just used all-purpose)
1 tsp. active dry yeast

Place all ingredients in bread machine pan in the order recommended by manufacturer. Run on dough cycle. If your machine doesn't have a dough cycle, take the dough out after the first rise. Let the dough sit, covered, for five to ten minutes to make it easier to handle.

Roll out dough on lightly floured surface. Place on pizza pan. This recipe is for a 12-inch pizza. It makes 1 thick or 2 thin crusts. We have a 15-inch pizza stone, and it made 1 medium crust.

Spread pizza sauce over the dough and sprinkle with toppings. We used a cheddar-mozzarella blend, homemade turkey sausage, olives, and Parmesan sprinkled on top. Yum!

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes or until crust is golden brown around edges. After the pizza was done baking, we sprinkled it with Italian seasoning. We didn't do this before it baked because we didn't want the seasonings to scorch.

Dinner Rolls

I made these rolls for our Easter dinner. They were a hit. The recipe made 24 rolls, and we came home with only 6 or 7.
This recipe is designed for being made in our bread machine. Non-bread machine instructions are after the original recipe (and hopefully they work!).

1 egg plus enough warm water to equal 1 1/3 cup
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
4 cups bread flour (we had fine results just using all-purpose)
2 tsp. active dry yeast

Place ingredients in bread machine according to manufacturer's directions. Run machine on dough setting. If machine does not have dough setting, remove dough after first rise.

Place dough on lightly floured surface. Divide into pieces and shape (it helps to let the dough sit covered for about 10 minutes to rest, makes it not so elastic so it won't spring back when you try to shape it).

Place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes or until double in size.

Bake at 350 degrees 20-30 minutes, or until done (I changed the recipe here and baked at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, to make a softer, lighter roll).

I shaped these in the butterfly shape, described in this article. At the point where he said to divide the dough in half, I divided it in thirds, so it would make 24 rolls instead of 16.


To make without bread machine:
Combine egg and water, lemon juice, oil, sugar, and salt in saucepan. Heat just until tepid (about 95 degrees). Pour into mixing bowl. Add yeast and stir. Add flour, one cup at a time at first, mixing well. As the dough thickens, add flour more slowly, stirring until the dough is kneadable.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, adding flour sparingly to keep the dough from sticking (too much flour will make the dough too firm and the rolls brick-like). Cover and allow to rise in an oiled bowl until doubled in bulk. Follow shaping, rising, and baking instructions above.