Ingredients vs. Food

Note: I originally posted this on one of my now defunct blogs (Thrifty Living) back on 9/16/2010.   I was looking through the past posts this morning, and I realized that the points I made then are still valid now, almost 5 years later.  The only difference is that I have two kids in college now, and don't feed 5 of us at dinner on a daily basis!  That pot of spaghetti sauce I talk about at the end goes a lot farther now, and I frequently end up freezing the extra sauce to use later.  :)  

Mmmm... spaghetti sounds good, doesn't it?

So, what exactly is the difference between ingredients and food?  When I think food, I think of meatloaf, cake, pies, hamburgers, and salads.  You know, tasty foods placed on a dinner table, waiting to be eaten.  When I think of ingredients, I think of the things that I need to make that food: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ground beef, apples.  Do you see the difference?  Ingredients are used to make food.  Food is the prepared, finished item that is ready to be consumed.

Now, think about your local grocery store.  When you walk into the store, do you see more food, or more ingredients?  Walking up and down the aisles, looking at the boxes on the shelves, in the freezers, and on display, do you see more food or ingredients?  Think back to  your last trip to the grocery store.  Was there more food in the cart?  Or more ingredients?

Why does this matter?  Three reasons:

Firstly, prepared food is more expensive than ingredients.  A box of a hamburger meal plus the cost of the hamburger meat is still more expensive than the cost of the hamburger meat, the tomato sauce, and the macaroni.  Additionally, when you buy the ingredients yourself, you will be making more food.  This means more servings.  If you have a large family with hungry teenagers, it means that they will eat well for less money.  If you are single or a smaller family, then you will have leftovers which can be frozen and taken to work for lunch later in the week or reheated for dinner on another night.

Secondly, the caloric intake.  There is much argument in nutrition circles that the cause of the obesity epidemic in this country is caused by the consumption of these prepared foods.  The food manufacturers are trying to make a quality product, for minimal cost, and still turn a profit.  I am always curious as to what things are going into those meals.  Malodextrin.  Soy Lecithin.  High Fructose Corn Syrup.  What exactly are those ingredients?  Where did they come from?  Are they a natural product, or are they man-made from something else?  If you create the meal yourself from ingredients you bought, you are controlling everything that goes in.  You control the sodium.  You control the sugars.  You control everything.  Do you need to stretch the meat out a little bit more?  Add a few beans to the meal.  It's a healthy, inexpensive way to stretch the meal.

Thirdly, you control where the food comes from.  I know I harp on this a lot, but I can not stress enough the importance of knowing where your food comes from.  Support your local farmers.  You can buy it from the farmer's market, or you can grow some of it in your own yard.  Your local farmers most likely use sustainable agricultural methods.  The food has been picked within the last few hours, while it was ripe.  Go ahead and ask the farmers about their farms.  Ask them about their sustainable methods.  If you are at an Organic Farmer's Market, chances are they will not only tell you about their farm, they might just pull out a photo album and show you the pictures of their farm.  Many organic farms sponsor an open house for their customers to come out and visit the farm in the fall. 

Check out those labels on your foods at the grocery store.  Just who are you supporting when you buy produce from Argentina?  Do you know what kind of pesticides they used on their food?  Do you know what methods they used to grow those grapes you are thinking of putting in your cart?  When you buy something from another country, what exactly are you paying for?  My guess is that much of the cost goes to cover the transport and shipping of that product from Argentina to the United States.  Have you ever wondered just how green that produce is when it is picked and shipped to this country?

I can hear you thinking in your head now "But what about coupons?"  Make no mistake, coupons have their place in the world.  I do use coupons, but I don't use them to buy finished food.  I use them to buy ingredients.  Beans, flour, tomato sauce, pasta, rice... well you get the idea.  I won't bore you with the math, but I sat down and figured out the bottom line years ago.  For the cost of two jars of spaghetti sauce, we can make one pot of spaghetti sauce from scratch.  Two jars of spaghetti sauce will serve us for one, maybe two spaghetti meals.  One pot of spaghetti sauce will serve us a spaghetti dinner one night.  Make 2 pizzas another night.  And, it will make two pans of veggie lasagna.  One for us to eat the night I make it, and another to wrap up tightly in foil and save in the freezer for another night.  One veggie lasagna serves us dinner for one night, and we have leftovers that we wrap up and take for lunch for the next couple of days. That's at least 4 meals from a pot of home-made spaghetti sauce as compared to 2 meals from jar sauce - and it's the same cost, or less.

If you really want to do what's best for your health, and your wallet, start buying more ingredients at the grocery store.

Graduation Recipe Book

My oldest child is graduating from college next month.  He has lived on campus, and eaten food from the dining hall for the last 4 years. 

This fall, he's heading off to graduate school several hours away from here. 

He's also going to be cooking for himself.

As a result, I am compiling a recipe book for him.

I found this awesome recipe book at Hallmark not too long ago.  It's small, and it's a 3 ring binder.  3x5 inch recipe cards fit inside of the book, and each "page" is a plastic page protector that holds two recipe cards.  You can write front and back on the card, put it into the page protector, and read through both sides.  I love this little album.

You notice it has Mickey Mouse on the cover?  There's a reason for that.  When he was little, and he was getting ready to move to his "big boy" bed, we went in search of just the right sheets for his bed.  After more hours than I care to admit, my little man found his sheets.  (he was about 20 months old at the time.  We were trying to transition him to a big boy bed before his brother arrived on the scene 4 months later.)  He saw these sheets - red sheets- with the black and white Mickey Mouse on them.  He picked them up, hugged them to him, and the match was made.

Since that time, those sheets were his sheets of choice until he went off to college.  Worn down and faded with age and washing, he still has them on his bed at home, and he gets after me if they are not on his bed when he comes home from school.

Anyway, back to the album....

I thought I would collect all of the recipes for his favorite foods.  The stuff he has grown up eating and consistently asks for every time he comes home.

I hadn't realized what a monumental task this was going to be.  I have recipes on slips of paper, taped to the inside of cupboard doors.  I have recipes on paper, shoved into the cabinet next to the dishes.  There's 3 or 4 recipes in one cookbook, and 2 in another, and 4 in another.  A few are in e-mails, and several are stored on my flash drive.

I'm still working on copying the recipes, but I have finally put them all into one place.  Let me tell you, that is the most amazing compilation of recipes you have ever seen.  All of them are my favorites, too.  (I guess that explains why I fall back on them so often!)  From Arroz con Pollo to my mother's recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes, I have a treasure trove.  I sent my Mom a couple of recipe cards, and there, in her flawless penmanship are two of her timeless recipes. Not only is it a treasure because they are her recipes, but - they are written in her own handwriting.  That will forever be a priceless treasure for him.

You know, I've been realizing a couple of things as I've been compiling this book over the past few months.

1) I need to make my very own copy of this book.  I have too many recipes scattered in too many places.

2) While I have the recipes out, and tracked down, I need to go ahead and make copies for the other two children.  Life is uncertain, and I want to make certain that I have the recipes, written in their own handwriting, of the remaining members of the older generation. 

3) I wish I had thought of this 10 years ago, when most of the members of the older generation were still with us.

I know a lot of people don't cook from scratch very often anymore, but with a book like this - a book of easy, quick, favorite meals - I think it would happen a little more often! 

Book Review - High Five

image: Amazon.com. 

Evanovich, Janet.  High Five.  2000.  St. Martin's Paperbacks.

My Review:

Stephanie Plum, the Bombshell Bounty Hunter is back, in this, her fifth novel. 

Stephanie stumbled into the job of bounty hunter after getting fired from her previous job as a lingerie buyer.  In order to make ends meet and avoid having to move in with her parents, Stephanie bribes her cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman into giving her a job.

In this book, Stephanie has been asked to find her missing Uncle Fred.  On a Friday afternoon, Fred disappeared on his way to the bank.  As Stephanie searches to find out what happened to Fred, she stumbles into a deeper mystery that most likely led to the disappearance of Fred:

1) An irregularity in the trash account had led Fred to question the garbage company and their bill keeping.  After Fred's disappearance, Stephanie went to investigate why Fred and Mabel's trash isn't being picked up, even though their bills are current.  After each of Stephanie's visits, another person in the office comes to a horrible end.

2) Stephanie's grandmother discovers that another neighbor had suffered a heart attack and died after complaining to the cable company that his cable was being cut off- even though his bills were current.  Is this coincidence?

3) And then, there are the mysterious green trash bags that Fred has taken pictures of. Trash bags with a secret heinous and disturbing.  A secret that was best left hidden.

This is a great romp through Trenton with Stephanie, Grandma Mazur, Joe, Ranger, and the formidable Lula.

A fun read, with some great plot twists that keep the story fresh, you'll enjoy the time you spend with Stephanie and her friends!

Author's Web Site: http://www.evanovich.com/

This post contains affiliate links.

40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge

At the beginning of Lent, I began a 40 bag challenge.  My goal was to get rid of 40 bags of junk during the 40 days of Lent.  You can read my original post about this here:
http://mini-van-mom.blogspot.com/2015/02/40-bags-in-40-days.html

I had gotten the idea of holding a 40 bag challenge from the White House Black Shutters Blog.  You can read Anne Marie's original post about the 40 bag challenge here: http://www.whitehouseblackshutters.com/40-bags-in-40-days-2015/

I just want to say here, I got massively sidetracked.  Oh, I got bags and bags of crap out of my house.  Trash bags, Goodwill bags, bags for the craft group at church, bags for the preschool my kids went to, and bags to the public library.  All told, I didn't quite come up with 40 bags.  I only got rid of 30 bags.

The problem began when I started cleaning out my kitchen.  We bought my house from my In-Laws.  They never completely moved out.  10 years later, I am still shoving my stuff into cabinets around their stuff.  I began my cleaning journey in the kitchen.  And ended it there.  Truth be told, I never really made it out of there.

I emptied out every single cabinet, cupboard, and drawer.  I sent stuff to the food bank - wait, I didn't add those bags into the count.  That was 3 boxes, so 33?

I threw out or gave away more stuff than I care to admit.  (Hello, 30 bags of crap total, and 20 of them were from my kitchen.)

I neatened things up.  I put down new shelf paper.  I added some beautiful dividers into the cabinets to have the flat pans sit straight up - instead of on top of the toaster oven, where they've been housed for years.

I added one of those nifty metal organizers that holds pot lids.

Organized the spices, collated the partials into one single bottle so I could free up more space.

Husband even made some moveable dividers for rotation of our canned goods in the pantry.  He's still working on one for the second shelf down.  These dividers are great because they take full advantage of the depth of the cabinet.  The shelves were so deep that the traditional rotating shelves that I was using left about 18 inches of unused space in front.

I went through all of the plastic containers and matched up lids and bottoms.  (Whoa, took way longer than I thought it would.)

I recycled the 5+ years of phone books I had sitting inside of another cabinet, and I organized all of the office supplies I had stored down there.  Actually, once the phone books were out, there really wasn't that much stuff in that cabinet, anyway.  (Wait, I forgot to add the phone books to the list.  That was 2 recycling bins full of old phone books.  So, that takes the total up to 35?)

Now, husband and I are looking at the awkward cabinets above the island and thinking that it would make sense to take the cabinets down.  They're all empty now, anyway.  Taking the cabinets down would open up a serious amount of horizontal space, and give us a place to slice veggies and maybe even make the kitchen lighter and brighter - we currently only have space to slice and dice on top of the stove.  It's not the best of arrangements.  And if we did remove the cabinets, we'd take them downstairs to the laundry room and add a counter or table top to them- thereby giving us a space to fold and sort laundry IN the laundry room.  Could it be?  Could we actually kill 2 birds with one stone?


This entire endeavor is beginning to read a little like the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!"

Graduation is how many weeks away?  Could we get this done before then?

Happy Easter!

source: http://treadinggrain.com/2015/happy-easter-3/

I hope that you are enjoying this day as much as we are!  The weather finally reflects the season!  It's spring today!  Temperatures are in the 60's!

All of our kids are home for the weekend, and it feels great to have them home!  We've been talking a lot and laughing a lot. We'll be delivering them back to school in a while, but not before we have our awesome Easter dinner! 

Enjoy your day!

Cooking Binge

I went on a bit of a cooking binge over the last two weeks. 

OK, not a little bit.  I cooked and froze over 80 freezer meals and casseroles.

I wanted to lay in a supply of frozen meals to help me get through this summer while the kids are home. 

I don't think I really thought through the mechanics of this before I began.  I had ordered some bulk chicken from our butcher (80 pounds), and I had planned out the kids favorite meals.  I also wanted to just freeze some of the chicken plain in order to make whatever struck my fancy some night.

Between the 80 pounds of chicken and the groceries to make the freezer meals, I spent about $400. 

I put together packages of Pineapple Terriyaki Chicken, Chicken Cacciatore, Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole, and Chicken Taco filling.

I made chicken pot pies.  I made shepherd's pie.  I made White Chicken Turkey.  I grilled some chicken and sliced it into strips to use in salads.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.  I made a lot!  Nothing is fried.  Nothing is sitting in a "cream of" soup.  Well, except for the chicken pot pie, but that's sitting in gravy I made from scratch.  Nothing from a can that is loaded with sodium and mystery ingredients. 

And I froze it all.

Well, except for the pulled chicken BBQ.  We had that for dinner twice over the last week.  Once was the original batch, the second time was for leftovers.  We might have also had it for a couple of lunches, too.

When I think back on it, I did an incredible amount of work in 20 hours.

However, this summer, while the kids are all home from their respective schools, I will have quick and easy meals.  We will either be able to pop them into the crock pot or oven, and dinner will basically be finished with minimal effort on my part! 

BONUS- I'll be able to spend more time WITH my family, instead of cooking and cleaning the kitchen when they're home.  As they get older and move on into their own lives, I really put a premium on the quality of time I spend with them.  Who knows when our next opportunity to spend time together will come along?

If you do the math on my meals, it comes up to $5 per meal.  Keep in mind, each one of these meals is meat-based.  Not bad, especially when you consider that I'll be feeding 4 people with each meal!  (Daughter is a vegetarian, so I don't include her in the count on anything that's been cooked with meat.)

Book Review- Death Coming Up a Hill

So, I posted this book on my YA book blog earlier this week.  It's already listed and linked on the "2015 book challenge" on the side bar. You can read my review on my YA blog here: http://librarynut-booksforteens.blogspot.com/2015/03/death-coming-up-hill.html.

I wanted to take a few more minutes and explore the book a little more fully here.  My YA Blog is a separate identity.  It's a way of making people aware of the fantastic YA literature that's out there, but I try and keep my personal voice off of that blog as much as possible.  That blog is intended to have a more professional edge to it.  Sometimes, I put my own voice into the reviews, but I try not to.

This blog, however, is full of my own personality and voice. (Sorry about that!)  So, I want to spend a little time going a bit more in-depth with this book.

My father was a Vietnam War Veteran.  He was there from 1969-1970.  I was 4 years old when he left, and way too young to understand much of what was going on.  I had many friends who had fathers and brothers and sisters who went to Vietnam and never returned home.  I had friends whose fathers or brothers came home years after everyone else did (POW's) and they were never the same again.  Dad never spoke much about his year in Vietnam, but I do know that it changed him forever.  He was never the same person after.  My Dad passed away almost 10 years ago.  In an attempt to understand a side of him that I never really knew, I do read occasional literature about the Vietnam War in an attempt to understand that time period in American History in the context of my growing up years.

This book was set in 1968- the year of the highest U.S. casualties of the entire conflict.

In the author notes, Chris Crowe talks about his struggles writing the book.  He finally decided to write the book in Haiku.  You remember Haiku- 3 lines, with a total of 17 syllables.  The first line has 5 syllables, the second 7, and the third 5.  The verses do not need to rhyme, the metrical structure defines the poem.

In this haunting tale, the story of Ashe Douglas, a 17 year old high school student who is facing love, loss, and an uncertain future is told.

One last aside here:  the author decided to tell the tale in Haiku, remember?  17 syllables to a verse?  The number of syllables in the entire book matches the number of lives we lost in Vietnam in 1968.

The title of the book is taken from a letter written home by a service member who fought on Hamburger Hill- the deadliest battle of the entire conflict.

The tale is worth reading.  With our nation currently wrapped up in the "War on Terror", and the continuing actions we are in around the globe, it helps to be reminded of the very real human stories of each and every service member.  

Author's Web Site: http://www.chriscrowe.com/about-me.html