Frugal Fridays - Zucchini Lasagna

Recap: Frugal Fridays is a blogging event where you prepare a cheap meal - serves 4 for under $10 - and you post about it sometime between Thursday evening and Saturday morning. I've been a Frugal Fridays slacker lately - I've still been preparing frugal meals on Fridays (and every day!), but I haven't been posting them. They were a little too plain, I felt, to be submitted to a blogging event.

This is a plain dish. I decided to post it anyway. Sometimes you just have to have plain dishes when you're on a tight budget. But plain can still be delicious.

This was a really frugal meal - one of those throw-together-whatever-you've-got sort of meals. I had a zucchini in the fridge. I had some homemade spaghetti sauce (made from blending together canned tomatoes, onion, and seasonings). I had some pepperoni. I had some shredded cheese. So I layered them all in a little pan and cooked it up!

Price of ingredients:
Zucchini - this came free from Mom's garden.
Spaghetti sauce - since I made it a few days ago, I don't recall what all went in it. I'll say it cost about $1.
Pepperoni - I only used about 10 slices; it was leftover from making pizza last week. We'll say $0.50.
Shredded cheese - Shhh, this was actually fake cheese, or "alternative shred," because we discovered that it was much cheaper than buying real cheese. It cost $4.25 for 2 lbs, and I used about 2/3 cup. So that cost me about $0.70.

Total - about $2.20. Woot!

The recipe wouldn't feed 4 hungry people, though. It was just me and the little ones and we pretty much finished it off. To feed 4, double it. Even doing that, it would cost under $5.

Zucchini Lasagna
1 large zucchini
1 1/2 cups spaghetti sauce
10-15 slices pepperoni
2/3 cup shredded cheese

Slice zucchini at an angle to make those fancy-looking long slices. Spray 8-inch square pan with cooking spray. Layer half the zucchini slices, half the sauce, all the pepperoni, and half the cheese. Then layer the remaining zucchini, sauce, and cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.


The zucchini slices were still a little crisp, and they were so tasty! The flavors went together better than I expected for such a simple, modest, inexpensive, thrown-together dish. Anyway, it cleaned out some leftovers in the fridge. :-)

Thomas (1 yr old) loved this, as long as I cut the zucchini pieces up really small. He kept wanting more. Zaylee (3 yr old) was less convinced. She had several bites, but decided she was done long before her bowl was empty. I ate two servings.

Zaylee's Birthday Cake

Last night we had the birthday party for Zaylee. Since Jeff and I bought her Candy Land for her gift, I thought a Candy Land Cake would be appropriate.

To make this cake I used:
1 box strawberry cake mix
1 batch Decorator Frosting (recipe below)
Air Heads
Peppermints
Gumdrops (large and small)
Small licorice pieces
Nutter Butter Bites
Lollipops
Chocolate chips
Colorful ice cream cones
Sprinkles
Green sugar crystals
Candy Land game to use as pattern


To save money, I purchased most of these items in the bulk foods section at Win-Co. We only got a little bit of each, and spent just pennies on each item!

I started with a boxed cake mix, strawberry flavor. Zaylee is a girly-girl and wanted a pink cake! I baked the cake in a 10x15 pan so I could have a larger surface to work with. Most Candy Land cakes I've seen use a double 9x13, but I didn't want that large of a cake. So I did one box of mix in the larger pan, and reduced the baking time. It took about 25 minutes.

Once the cake cooled, I frosted it with this frosting recipe. I really liked this frosting, because it ended up tasting very much like bakery frosting. The key was using shortening instead of butter, and beating it for a very long time.

Decorator Frosting
6 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup shortening
6 tbsp. milk
2 tsp. vanilla

Beat until fluffy. I used my mom's stand mixer and just let it go for several minutes, scraping down the sides occasionally. I did have to add an additional 2 tbsp. milk because Idaho is dry and everything requires additional liquid. The frosting was fluffy, thick, and beautifully white!

Frost the cake, reserving a cup or two of frosting.

Trace path on cake with toothpick. Cut Air Heads into six squares each to use as path pieces, and lay along the path traced. Use Airheads cut into strips for the Rainbow Trail, and another Air Head, lined with gumdrops, for Gumdrop Pass.

For Candy Castle, press ice cream cones upside down into the frosting, and decorate with some of reserved frosting and sprinkles.

Snow Flake Lake is made with big globs of reserved frosting, piped from a baggie with a large hole cut in the corner. For Chocolate Swamp, mix some cocoa into the rest of the frosting and pipe large globs. Top with chocolate chips. I'm glad they changed Molasses Swamp to Chocolate Swamp - it would have been much more difficult to come up with a way to incorporate molasses onto this cake!

Pipe a small amount of the chocolate frosting into the arrow at the start of the path.

Use the remaining candies to make Peppermint Forest, Gumdrop Mountains, Licorice Forest, Peanut Acres, and Lollipop Woods, using board game as a guide. There is also a Gingerbread Tree on our game, but I didn't have space to put that on the cake.


Zaylee enjoyed her cake very much! Who wouldn't?

Zucchini Snack Cake

Today is my daughter Zaylee's third birthday. Happy birthday, Zaylee!


We're having her actual party, with the official cake and ice cream, on Thursday because it worked out more conveniently for us. But we wanted to have a little celebration today to commemorate the day our little sweetie was born. So I made this little cake with a zucchini we had sitting in the fridge.

I altered a recipe for Zucchini Bars/Cake from Real Mom Kitchen - the original recipe was for a whole sheet cake, and I just wanted a little cake. So I decreased all the ingredients and here's what I came up with.


Zucchini Snack Cake
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup grated zucchini
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
Dash pepper (optional)

Combine ingredients in order given. Pour into greased 8-inch square pan. Bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes. Cool in pan for a few minutes, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling. Top with cream cheese frosting, or powdered sugar for a more vintage feel. I decided to go with powdered sugar because I've been eating way too many calories lately, and didn't want to go overboard - the real party with the calorie-rich frosted cake is only in two days anyway!


This was a tasty little cake - soft and fluffy, not too sweet or too spicy. This would be a great anytime cake, because it's small and nutritious, but still sweet enough to satisfy cravings.

Peach Cupcakes

We had some friends over for dinner last night and had such a great time! Dinner consisted of two homemade pizzas (made with bread machine crust) - one pepperoni and one Hawaiian; a delicious Caesar salad brought by our guests, and some yummy cupcakes for dessert. This recipe comes from my new cookbook - 2008 Taste of Home Annual Recipes. I won this book in a drawing on A Peek in Priscilla's Kitchen. So many tasty recipes! This is the first recipe I've tried from this book, and it was a great one to start on!

Peach Cupcakes
1 cup vanilla or white chips
6 tbsp. butter, cubed
1 package (18.25 oz) white cake mix
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cup chopped peeled fresh peaches (the original recipe called for 1 cup raspberries and 1/2 cup peaches)

Lemon Frosting
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp. lemon juice

In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the chips and butter. Microwave at 70% power until melted; stir until smooth. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cake mix, milk, eggs, vanilla, and melted chips; beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Fold in the peaches.

Fill paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full (I actually under-filled mine a bit in order to get flatter tops). Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.


For frosting, in a small mixing bowl, beat the butter, powdered sugar, and lemon juice until smooth. Frost cupcakes. Makes 2 dozen cuppies.

I was concerned that the peach chunks would make the cupcakes soggy and unappetizing, but needn't have worried. I just made sure to chop the peaches small, and they didn't affect the texture of the cake at all. The cupcakes were all light and fluffy, and perfectly wonderful!



p.s. Remember the peach pie I was so sad to not get a piece of? Well, they went ahead and saved the whole pie for when we were able to visit on Thursday. So I got a piece after all! Here it is, smothered in real whipped cream. It was delicious!

National Welsh Rarebit Day

By a show of hands, how many people have ever even heard of Welsh Rarebit, let along know what it is? If you're raising your hand, you know more than I did before yesterday. Yesterday my sister and I noticed that today, September 3, is National Welsh Rarebit Day. And we had absolutely no idea what that meant! Upon seeing the name Welsh Rarebit I thought it would be something fancy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is a simple, humble, fairly inexpensive dish.

Here is what we found when we looked it up on Wikipedia: "Welsh rarebit, Welsh rabbit, or more infrequently, rarebit is traditionally a savory sauce made from a mixture of cheese and various other ingredients and served hot over toasted bread. ... The first recorded use of the term Welsh rabbit was in 1725, but the origin of the term is unknown. It may be an ironic name coined in the days when the Welsh were notoriously poor: only better-off people could afford butcher's meat, and while in England rabbit was the poor man's meat, in Wales the poor man's meat was cheese. It may be a slur against the Welsh, since the dish contains no meat and so was considered inferior. Then again, because the word Welsh was at the time used by the English to describe anything inferior or foreign, it may allude to the dish's Continental European origin."

So after all that extensive research, we looked up a recipe. We found one on allrecipes.com that made it clear that Welsh Rarebit is simply a white sauce with cheese and a few seasonings. I thought - cool! I can definitely make that! So here it is - Welsh Rarebit!


Welsh Rarebit
4 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. dry mustard
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
2 cups milk*
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

In a 2 quart saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. Stir in and blend the flour, salt, mustard and pepper. Stir in the milk and Worcestershire sauce. Continue stirring the mixture for 10 minutes, or until thickened.

Stirring continuously, melt the cheese into the mixture and blend well. Serve immediately over warm toast.

*I found that, Idaho being excessively dry, I needed to add about 1/4 cup extra liquid, because my sauce was thickening far too much. So start with the amounts specified in the recipe, and then adjust if necessary.

Verdict: This was really yummy! There was something humble and "homespun" about it, and I always enjoy simple food. I'm glad I took the time to discover Welsh Rarebit, because we will be making this again.

More Peach Treats

Monday and Tuesday we canned a lot of peaches. Yesterday after doing our canning, my sister and I made some more treats from the peaches that we didn't put up. Janelle chose to make a pie, and I made ice cream.

Peach Glacé Pie
6 cups peaches, peeled and sliced
2/3 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
Baked pastry shell

Janelle made her pastry shell from scratch. Here it is, all beautifully pricked and fresh out of the oven. Sometimes Janelle gets quite artistic about her food.


For glaze, in a blender container or food processor, combine 1 cup peaches and the water. Cover and blend or process until smooth. Add enough additional water to equal 1 1/2 cups. In a medium saucepan combine sugar and cornstarch. Stir in blended peach mixture. Cook and stir over medium heat till mixture is thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 2 minutes more. Cool for 10 minutes without stirring.

Spread about 1/4 cup of the glaze over bottom and sides of pastry shell. Arrange half of the remaining peaches in pastry shell. Carefully spoon half of the remaining glaze over fruit. Arrange remaining fruit over first layer. Spoon remaining glaze over fruit, covering each piece.


Chill for 1 to 2 hours. Garnish with whipped cream or serve with ice cream.


Unfortunately, the pie wasn't done chilling by the time I had to leave, so I didn't actually get to eat any of it. So if anyone makes this pie, please let me know how it turns out. Rub it in that you get to eat it and I don't.




We had a lot of problems getting this ice cream to work. It's not the recipe - the recipe is absolutely delicious! It was the ice cream maker. Mom and Dad have had this ice cream maker for many many years. It's probably about as old as I am. Mom forgot to crush the ice before adding it to the machine, so the canister kept catching on pieces of ice. And as for me, with this machine it works better to add the fruit after the ice cream has frozen properly, or the machine has a hard time turning. And I added nice big chunks of peach right at the beginning with all the other ingredients. So we ended up with a thick ice cream soup. But it was really, really tasty ice cream soup!

Peach Ice Cream
2 (14 oz) cans sweetened condensed milk
5 cups milk
2 cups heavy cream
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups chopped peaches (or substitute fruit of choice)

Combine all ingredients in canister of ice cream maker. Freeze according to manufacturer's directions.

Peach Crisp

I'm at my mom's house, where there has been a bumper crop of peaches. Lots and lots of peaches all over the place! Yesterday we spent all day canning peaches. This morning I headed back over to do some more canning. But first I took several of the more ripe peaches, and made this yummy crisp.

Peach Crisp
5 cups fresh or frozen peaches, sliced (if using frozen, thaw but do not drain)
2-4 tbsp. sugar
1/2 cup regular oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
Dash nutmeg
Dash black pepper (optional, this is my "secret ingredient")
1/4 cup butter or margarine

Peel and slice peaches if using fresh, or thaw if using frozen. Do not drain frozen peaches. Place in a 9-inch round cake pan. Stir in sugar.

In a mixing bowl, combine oats, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper if desired. Cut in butter. Sprinkle over peaches.

Bake at 375 for 30-35 minutes, or 40 minutes if using thawed frozen peaches.

Serve warm with ice cream!