Easy boudin kolaches

Just had the best start to a workday I'll have in a long time -- a dear colleague brought us boudin kolaches. I quote her:

"They are SUPER easy – it’s just 2 boudain links taken out of the casing (DJ’s is my favorite, but Zumo’s is also delicious!), two cans of crescent rolls, and if you want to add it, cheese!"

Preheat oven to 375 

Cook boudin in a pan over medium heat until done, about 8 min

While the sausage is cooking, open the crescent roll can and spread pieces out in a sheet pan

Put a large spoon-sized amount of boudin on each roll, wrap dough over it 

Bake 11-13 min

Carry to tailgate and trade for beer!

In search of a Faux Dr Pepper Smoothie

This isn't a smoothie that replicates the taste of a Dr Pepper, but it is a smoothie that I could happily substitute on a 1-to-1 basis for Dr Pepper in my life. Which is a boon, because of course soda = bad and fruit = good.

For experimentation purposes, below this smoothie recipe are speculative ingredient lists for the Jamba Juice smoothie that originally gave me the idea and for the secret flavors in Dr Pepper. :)

To make a one-blenderful batch (two 15-oz portions):

• 1 cup pomegranate-cherry juice, chilled
• 2 cups nonfat vanilla yogurt
• 1 cup frozen fruit -- cherry/blueberry/currant mix
• 1 cup frozen fruit -- blackberry/blueberry/raspberry mix

Because HEB sells the latter mix in a wonderful 36-oz bag, here is the shopping list for four batches:

Two 16-oz bottles pom-cherry juice ($4 each, totals about 4 cups)
Two 32-oz containers nonfat vanilla yogurt ($2 each, totals about 8 cups)
Two 14-oz bags frozen cherry/berry/currant mix ($3.50 each. The cherries are pre-pitted! And in this mix, currant means "blackcurrant" berries rather than zante grapes. Totals about 3.5 cups)
One 36-oz bag frozen blue/black/raspberries ($9, totals about 4.5 cups)

That's a total of $28 to make eight smoothies, which comes in about 25% less than buying eight Jamba smoothies (though note these are not the same ingredients, notably lacking such things as crazy expensive acai juice).

It's probably worth digging around to find some yogurt and some juice that isn't 300 calories per serving, because those two items put the sugar and calorie load up near that of an actual Dr Pepper. Still,

WTH does one do with four batches? Well, one can freeze the juice and the yogurt separately in ice cube trays, to make smoothie packs. The yogurt should be good a month or two and the juice possibly four to six months. Or one can do all one's blending at once, which saves on cleanup and makes subsequent mornings go faster, and freeze the smoothie itself in cubes. (My trays make 2-Tbsp cubes, so 15 cubes would make a 15-oz smoothie.) Advice I found online indicates if you put the cubes in a water bottle or something, roughly an hour later it will have thawed into smoothie consistency (give the bottle a couple good shakes). It takes more than two hours for the smoothie mix to freeze in my fridge, so I'm considering buying more trays.

Here are the official ingredients of the Jamba Juice Acai Super Antioxidant smoothie...

• "Acai juice blend, strawberries, raspberry sherbet (contains milk), soymilk (contains soy), ice, blueberries, antioxidant boost (contains soy)"

One bootleg version of this Jamba drink:

• ½ cup frozen blueberries, ½ cup frozen strawberries, ½ cup acai juice, ½ cup lime sherbet, ½ cup raspberry sherbet, ½ cup soy milk, 1 cup ice

Acai juice, it appears, is crazy expensive, so I am very glad that it is unlikely to be a Dr Pepper flavoring.

Here is a popular rendition of the secret 23 flavors in Dr Pepper (bear in mind it was invented in 1885):

• Cherry, vanilla, almond, plum, blackberry, raspberry, apricot, coriander, clove, amaretto, anise, caramel, molasses, birch beer, allspice, ginger, sarsparilla, sassafras, juniper, spikenard, wintergreen, burdock, dandelion.

Bear with me as I write out the instructions for my own blender here, as this is the blog post I actually call up and refer to when blending, and I am a pre-flight checklist kinda person. (Note: The directions also say to load the blender with liquids/soft foods on the bottom and progress to dry and/or frozen bits or ice at the top, so if one is blending a preassembled pack with frozen cubes instead of liquids, remember to adjust.)

Useful to have handy: Half-cup measure and spatula to load ingredients into blender; glass to hold the blender tamper once it comes out with smoothie all over it; plate or something to set the implements on, because all of these berries make a very effective burgundy dye. :) Also, doesn't hurt to have the ice cube trays out and ready. And baggies to put the frozen cubes into afterward, so they don't pick up other smells in the freezer.

Blending:
Load ingredients (liquid at bottom, frozen on top). Snap lid on (securing its port cover with a half-turn); set to Variable and speed 1; switch on and quickly range up to speed 10, then flip to High; take out the port cover, insert the tamper and poke the ingredients down toward the blades; recover the port and blend 30-60 sec until the mix starts surging up in four mounds. Don't blend too long or it'll get melty/runny. Flip back to Variable, scroll down from 10 to 1, then Off. (Afterward, a couple drops of dish soap and a spin up to High basically equals a dishwasher cycle, if needed.)

Simple frozen salmon!

Move the frozen salmon to the fridge the day before, to let it thaw, and bake on a buttered/tinfoiled sheet about 18 minutes at 375. If possible, marinate before and/or glaze during.

Soy-Garlic Salmon a la Mom -- This came out MARVELOUS.
2 Tbsp Dijon
3 Tbsp soy
6 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp minced garlic

Balsamic Salmon
1.5 cloves garlic, minced
tsp white wine
1 tsp honey
5.5 tsp balsamic vinegar
1.5 tsp Dijon
salt and pepper to taste
Soften garlic in sauce pan; add rest and simmer 3 min.; brush on fish and bake.

Caprese salad, the cheater's way

Grocery store:
Fresh mozzarella, a bunch of fresh basil, and canned tomatoes (can actually be healthier/tastier than fresh tomatoes!)

Chop the mozzarella, wash and tear the basil, drain the tomatoes and toss it all in a bowl with some balsamic dressing.

Salad! :)

Experiment! 5-grain salad

Ongoing experiment to reproduce a favorite grain salad. Because the store packages of wheat berries and rice mix will probably make this recipe 4x, and this recipe only makes 5 small side servings, next time I might try doubling this batch.

But first, let's see if baking works for wheat berries and rice!

Shopping list

Wheat berries, brown-basmati-wild rice mix, 1/2 c slivered almonds, 1/2 c craisins, 2-3 lemons, and rice wine, butter and oil if they're not in the pantry.

Directions

Updated rice thoughts: Less water was better (grains did not get gummy), but cooked rice stuck to bottom of pan. Next time, try this? - 2 cups rice blend, rinse thoroughly (2-3x). Butter bottom/low sides of saucepan, bring 2 c water to boil, add washed rice, lower to simmer. Cover and simmer 15 min (it'll bubble over so lift lid and stir every 5 min or so). When done cooking: Toss and fluff rice. 

---- Baking the rice: 

This time, we'll try baking the rice. Need a casserole dish with lid.

Instructions are from here and are for brown rice - but I'll try it with the rice/wheatberry mix and see where we get. Note that the advice says DON'T skip boiling the water, no peeking (lets out moisture) and let it rest (absorbs the rest of the water).

Preheat oven to 375, boil the 2 ¾ cups water (electric kettle!) and combine all ingredients in the casserole dish. 

1 ½ cups brown rice - or in this case, 1 cup rice mix and 1/2 cup wheat berries

½ teaspoon salt or to taste

¼ cup butter

2 ¾ cups boiling water

Cover and bake 60-75 min or until rice is fully cooked. Let it rest 5 min to absorb rest of water, fluff with fork and serve. 

Stir in
1/2 cup dried sweet cranberries
1/2 slivered almonds

Dressing:
Grate the salt grinder over it a few times
Zest of 2 lemons, and maybe some of the juice?
2-3 Tbsp rice wine 

Second set of notes:

This time I'm trying baking the rice instead of stovetop. But if that doesn't work, here are the stovetop directions to return to!

Cook 1 cup rice mix and 1/2 cup wheat berries: Rinse the rice in cold water and drain, add wheat berries and a little bit of olive oil, add 3c water, bring to boil, knock the heat down to simmer, cover tightly, simmer 15 minutes, pull pan off heat and let rest 10 minutes.

First set of notes:

For the first real try at replicating a "5-grain salad" I used to get at a local store and became totally addicted to, I found wheat berries, a brown-basmati-wild rice mix, bulk slivered almonds and bulk cranberry "raisins" at my grocery. The prep directions on the wheat berries and the rice mix were nearly identical, so I cooked them all together with what turned out to be possibly a little too much water (rice came out gummy). Suggestions to correct gummyness include rinsing the rice first, using less water and using more (!) water. Mom suggested baking the rice instead of boiling and we think that also would work for the wheat but would need some further timing experimentation. So here's my best directions for NEXT time, plus some notes.

(Incidentally, the container of rice and the bag of wheat berries looked like they hold enough to make this exact recipe four times. And this recipe yielded 5 servings -- small ones, like side servings.)

For reference, here are the original ingredients listed on the store package: basmati rice, brown rice, wheat berries, wild rice, craisins, almonds, canola/olive oil blend, lemon juice, rice wine vinegar, kosher salt, lemon zest, white pepper. 

Southern Living's "perfect" buttermilk biscuits

http://youtu.be/d348FGXomg0

(it looked like this amount of dough made about 9 biscuits) 

1 stick frozen butter, grated
2 1/2 cups White Lily self-rising flour
1 cup cold buttermilk

Grate the frozen butter and gently mix into flour, using your fingers. Store mixture in freezer 10 minutes to re-chill. Make a well in middle of mixture and pour in buttermilk. Incorporate well, using approx. 15 stirs. (One commenter's family tradition is to stir with a fork "until the dough follows the fork around the bowl.") Place mixture on floured surface and sprinkle flour on top. Flour rolling pin. Roll out into rectangle, fold over and repeat four more times. On the last fold over, roll out to 1/2 inch thickness. Flour biscuit cutter each time you cut into dough, and cut straight up and down. Place biscuits on parchment-lined pan, making sure they touch. Bake @ 475 degrees for 15 minutes. Brush tops with melted butter.


Another commenter: "Make sure all your ingredients are fresh.  Flour and baking powder go bad after a while when they have been opened.  Humidity gets into it and things won't rise like they should.  Making biscuits on a rainy day you'll notice they don't rise like they should." 

One-dish meals for family or company

Bookmarking this from Southern Living because most of these seem like meals that could be made fairly quickly with little cleanup, but would feed several people who would feel like they had a real meal.

Note these are not here cause they're healthy, necessarily (cheese. baby!). Or cheap. And not all of them are fast. Some of them take a while, but all are one-dish, and a fair proportion of them "cheat" by using premade ingredients (see "not cheap," above) which is one of my favorite sanity tricks when unannounced occasions strike.

http://www.southernliving.com/food/whats-for-supper/easy-one-dish-dinner-recipes/view-all

Mini pancake bites

A blog post I saw with these suggests that they would make neat brunch/potluck items, and I have to say I agree, assuming I manage to cook them in a way that they aren't gloppy in the middle, etc. And I have a mini muffin tin :)

Easy capellini pomodoro and/or bruschetta

This could be about an 80% "pantry" meal. All you need to buy fresh is the garlic and basil. You could technically get away with dried basil and garlic from a jar... but those are serious flavor downgrades (whereas canned tomatoes are not a bad sub for fresh tomatoes, flavorwise).

For bruschetta, skip the pasta and in fact all of the cooking; just mix together all of these raw ingredients, let it set up a couple hours to swap flavors around (as Mark Twain would say) and then serve on rounds of toasted French bread. I know bread freezes well... does toast freeze well? That would get you a step closer to the bruschetta being a "pantry" appetizer.

• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 c extra virgin olive oil
• 12 oz angel hair pasta, cooked

Cook garlic in olive oil till tender.

• Two 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Add tomatoes and pepper to pan; toss till heated through.

Put this mixture atop the cooked pasta with:

• 2 c fresh chopped basil leaves
• 1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

Lee Bailey's potatoes

2lb new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into chunks
1/2 stick butter
Splash olive oil
Small handful sliced garlic
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp water

Melt the butter in a large skillet, toss in olive oil. Combine potatoes and everything else; put in skillet, cover and cook on low heat 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and creamy with crispy edges.

5-minute panna cotta

This is my tweaked version of a recipe David Liebovitz says he got from a Tuscan cook. He also says that if it takes more than five minutes, you're doing it wrong. I can get behind that.

Berries and maybe a sauce are often served with it. But plenty of people also like just the creamy vanilla goodness by itself.

Remember, this is my slightly reorganized version -- for the original, go here.

• 2 packets powdered gelatin
• 6 tablespoons cold water
• canola oil
• 4 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Lightly oil eight custard cups with a neutral-tasting oil like canola.
2. Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water in a medium-sized bowl (at least 5-cup capacity) and let stand 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Heat the cream and sugar in a saucepan till the sugar is dissolved.
4. Take the saucepan off the heat, stir in the vanilla extract and pour the very warm cream-vanilla mix over the gelatin. Stir till the gelatin is dissolved.
5. Pour the cream/gelatin mixture into the prepared cups, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate till the mixture becomes firm, at least two hours.

To serve, you take off the plastic wrap, then turn the bowl upside down over a plate -- the molded panna cotta tumps out, if you're lucky. If it doesn't, what the hell, turn it rightside up again and hand it to 'em with a spoon.

Savory finger sandwiches for a party

From the rescued computer files come these fairly easy sandwiches that I made one time for a combined baby shower (men and women, which is my favorite kind) where a group of us were co-hosting and we wanted to strike a slightly formal note because there were a lot of older family members there. I was in charge of non-dessert foods and brought a bunch of stuff to serve with and vases to hold flowers.

Me personally, my heart always falls when I survey a buffet table laden with grapes and bits of cheese; I wanted to make sure there was meat! These were my solutions. They went over pretty well.

Fancy party sandwiches


Pimento cheese sandwiches -- pimento cheese
Roast beef/cranberry sandwiches -- 1/2 pkg cream cheese, 2 Tbsp prepared horseradish, 1c cranberry sauce, 3/4 lb roast beef, 6 slices provolone
Sundried tomato sandwiches -- 1 pkg cream cheese (8oz), 10 herb-seasoned sundried tomato halves, 1 container spreadable cheese with pepper (5.2oz), 1/3 cup packed fresh basil leaves -- makes enough for 5 big sandwiches = 20 little sandwiches


Need to make 5 of each kind of sandwich and cut into
quarters. (20 slices white, 10 wheat)

30 ppl x 2 sandwiches = 60

------------------------------------------------
Shopping list:

White and wheat bread

5 slices provolone
5.2 oz spreadable cheese w/pepper
jalapeno pimient��o spread
2 pkgs cream cheese

jar horseradish (at least 2 tbsp)
1 cup whole berry cranberry sauce
10 herb-oil sundried tomato halves

3/4 lb deli roast beef

1.3 cup fresh basil leaves
------------------------------------------------


Saturday night:
--Mix 2 Tbsp horseradish and 4 oz. cream cheese
--Mix 8 oz. cream cheese, tomato halves, pepper cheese, basil leaves.
--Load up car with baby shower stuff


Day of: Start making sandwiches at 11. Set out the two cream cheese mixes.

Spread & cut 5 pimiento sandwiches on white
Spread & cut 5 tomato sandwiches on white
5 wheat slices: spread with horseradish mix, then cranberry, roast beef, provolone
(1 hour)

Lemon chess pie

So good and so easy -- this is one of my fallbacks for taking a dish to a potluck. I'm recovering old computer files and found it!

Lemon Chess Pie
From Southern Living
1 unbaked 9-inch deep-dish frozen pastry shell
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened (don’t cook the eggs with it!)
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon lemon rind
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon cornmeal
Garnishes: lemon slice and zest
Bake pastry shell at 425° for 7 minutes or until light golden brown. Reduce oven temperature to 350°.

Beat butter and sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; add eggs and remaining ingredients, beating just until blended. Pour mixture into pastry shell; place on a baking sheet.

Bake at 350° for 45 to 50 minutes or until pie is firm, shielding edges with aluminum foil to prevent excessive browning, if needed. Cool completely on a wire rack. Garnish, if desired.

Stuff that freezes surprisingly well

Extra eggs (not in the shell; crack 'em, separate 'em and put 'em in ice cube trays)
Bread
Not just berries but also pre-made smoothies!

My notes on freezing smoothies and grain salad

My nutritionist friend cautions that if store-bought smoothies don't have vitamins A and C, or if they do contain sugar or corn syrup, they're worthless.

But as I have now tried several that I quite liked, despite the lack of any sugar and also despite the presence of dubious-sounding health additives, I might possibly take the next step and try making some at home. Though the convenience of ones made for you is unbeatable, the $3.50-$5 price tag will prevent me from making a habit of them.

To increase the convenience of homemade smoothies, bloggers have some quite helpful suggestions, starting with making larger batches and freezing them; these inexpensive freezer jars (basically cups with lids, but made to withstand freezing) are a particularly smashing idea.

So far my favorites -- and some of the healthiest smoothies -- are the ones made of just frozen berries and ice, so I'll start there. I read that frozen acai puree is available at grocery stores, so I'll look that up; it appears possible to sneak in things like flaxseed meal and who knows, perhaps wheat germ. Many other additives appear to be total hooey, as this website refreshingly specifies. (Ginger, though, might be worth adding strictly for its taste.) Acai might not be hooey, according to some actual experiments by reputable folks (Texas A&M, naturally. Whoop!) The Mayo Clinic seems to think flaxseed oil and protein powder are OK.

The simplest way to start appears to be simply chucking a few cups of frozen fruit and perhaps a little crushed ice into the blender. Ways to add smoothness/bulk include frozen bananas, juice, low- or nonfat yogurt, skim milk and a tablespoon of honey, but I'll start simple first. I already know to be wary of added sugar in the frozen fruits; and I know to hull the strawberries (basically, get rid of the green planty bits and any tough or woody innards) before pulping them. Also, I remember from a long-ago recipe that sometimes cardamom makes an unexpectedly nice spice for strawberries.

The very basic idea:

Simple Fruit Smoothie (3 servings)
1 cup each milk, crushed ice, frozen raspberries, frozen strawberries
Or: 1 cup ice, 1 cup milk, then 1/2 cup each of black-, blue-, rasp- and straw-berries.
Optional tablespoon of sugar
Puree all ingredients except ice; then add ice and continue to puree until smooth.

Here's a distinctly different one:

Raspberry Limeade Smoothie (2 servings)
1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries
6 Tbsp frozen limeade concentrate
1 cup ice cubes

Some people, alternately, have tried adding a little lemonade mix powder, which might be nice too, especially with blueberries or strawberries.

Even though good frozen fruit is not cheap, I expect the overall cost will be less weighty than the $5 for a 16-ounce drink charged at the smoothie bars. But of course, those are made for you,which is grand.

After this, perhaps I'll try cooking up some four-grain salad and freezing that for healthy snacks -- most short-grained rices are supposed to freeze well (stop cooking just a bit early; portion them into cups or plastic bags while still a bit warm, to retain moisture; and store in freezer -- then microwave up to three minutes to reheat/finish cooking). Wheatberries and almond slivers are supposed to freeze excellently, and dried cranberries have been frozen, at least, even if nobody's bragging about the results; so everything but the basmati should do OK.

Here's my shortened version of that recipe. Note that 5c chicken broth = a 32-oz carton plus 1c.

Four-Grain Salad

Pot 1: 1c wheatberries + 3c salted water -- cook 45min
Pot 2: 1c long rice + 1c wild rice + 5c chicken broth -- 40 min
Pot 3: 1c basmati + 1.5c water + 1 pat butter -- 25min

Meanwhile, make dressing: 0.25c olive oil, 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 2 Tbsp dark sesame oil. Optional - a little lemon zest.

Combine: cooked grains + dressing + 0.75c dried cranberries + 0.75c slivered almonds

Freeze: Portion into containers and seal while still slightly warm to keep moisture. Let cool; store in freezer up to 1 month.

I'll come back to this entry and record results and prices once I give it a try.

Flan from a can!

Fast and easy flan that beat the caramelized bottom off the full-difficulty traditional flan in a taste test? Sign me up. Here's my friend Josefina's flan recipe:

1/2 cup raw sugar
4 eggs
1 can condensed milk
1 can evaporated milk
1-3 tsp. Mexican vanilla

Heat oven to 350. Boil sugar in a nonstick pan till it just starts to turn brown. Pour sugar & swish to coat bottom of ramekins (or a bread pan, or a glass baking dish - pie pan maybe?).

Combine eggs, both milks and vanilla in blender. Pour into baking dish/ramekins. Place them in a larger pan filled with enough water to go halfway up the side of the baking dish.

Bake 1 hour or till center isn't wiggly and a knife comes out clean. Run knife around edge, put plate over dish and invert to flip the flan out.

NO cooking, fruit and veg plan

Shopping plan:
Day 1: buy 6 yogurts, 1 bag blueberries, 6 bananas, 3 salads, 1 tub
cranberry-grain salad. Est = $20
Day 4: buy 6 fruity drinks, 6 bananas, 3 salads, 1 tub cranberry-
grain salad. Est = $25

In an attempt to set a new low bar, even for the Lazy Chef, in sheer
laziness, I am attempting this week to survive entirely off products
purchased at Central Market with no home preparation AT ALL.

The "Central Market" part of this means that it is not entirely cost-
conscious, but we will work out the kinks as we go. For right now,
Central Market wins because it has a marvelous salad bar and assorted
fruity drinks and prepared foods.... pretty convenient, if not cheap.

First purchase is four containers of yogurt and one bag of frozen
organic wild blueberries, total cost $7.37, which means each
breakfast costs $1.84. There is a little prep involved here, really
-- at home, you have to open the bag of blueberries and put them into
separate containers.

Second purchase is three salads, total $4.19, or $1.40 each. The
reason this works is that Central Market allows you to completely
make your own salad -- and they have cranberries and bacon bits. I
can eat almost anything with cranberries and bacon bits. Their lemon-
oregano salad dressing is mighty tasty, and they provide little
containers for the dressing -- which means in less than ten minutes
at the store, you can assemble completely packaged salads. My
downfall, apparently, is having to unbundle the spinach and make the
salads at home, and I always wind up with waste items -- extra
croutons, or spinach that wilted before I used it, whatever. This is
so simple and easy that it's a world-beater.

Three days seems to be about the longest the salads can go in the
fridge without starting to look a little suspect. So I'd have to go
by Central Market every three days if I did this for real.

Four bananas ran me 89 cents, so 22 cents each.

The killer was really the fruity drinks. I got four fruit-puree-no-
additives smoothie type drinks, which cost the earth -- $2.50 and
$2.60 apiece. However, they taste pretty good, and they purport to
supply 2 or 3 of your day's fruit servings.

And a tub of Central Market's marvelous 9-grain salad was $4.49, or
$1.50 for each of three generous and tasty portions.

So say for example that each day I ate.....

Vanilla yogurt with blueberries, $1.84
Banana, 22 cents
Purchased lunch, $7
Salad, $1.40
Banana, 22 cents
Grain salad snack, $1.50
Fruit smoothie, $2.50

My total food expenditure for the day is $14.68. (That's not counting
the $3 in Dr Peppers I will probably buy.)

This is a lot, but essentially I am grazing all day rather than
having three meals. If I ate three meals and each meal cost $5, it
wouldn't sound quite as bad. It's still paying a pretty steep
premium for the convenience, notably those fruity drinks.

However: My prep time at home is nearly nil... my fruit and veggie
intake skyrockets... I think this might be worth a try for a while.

So to break that back down: I'll need to make two visits to Central
Market each week. The yogurt/berries keep pretty well, and so do the
fruit drinks, but the bananas, salads and grain-salad need to be
fresh every couple days.

So if I go to the market twice a week...

Day 1: buy 6 bananas, 3 salads, 6 yogurts, 1 pack blueberries, 1 tub
cranberry-grain salad. Estimated cost: 1.3+4.2+5.4+4+4.5= $19.40
Day 4: buy 6 bananas, 3 salads, 6 fruity drinks, 1 tub cranberry-
grain salad. Estimated cost: 1.3+4.2+15+4.5= $25

This works until I get sick of eating the same things, at least! I
think I'll give it a try.

Addendum: My nutritionist friend weighs in on expensive fruit drinks:

The more expensive juices are usually less processed, so probably retain slightly more vitamins than other juices, but I am guessing it is not a huge difference. Things to look for are 100% of Vitamin C&A. I would also limit any with added sugars, even ones that sound healthy like evaporated cane juice, or just think of those as equivalents to soda.

Black-eyed Pea Salad

My pal Christine's recipe, the best I've had!

Marinade:

1 cup red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar

_Half-cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

Half tsp. black pepper

2 dashes Tabasco sauce

Half-cup vegetable oil

Fresh basil to taste, sliced (optional)

Salad:

1 cup red or sweet onion, finely chopped

1 or 2 bell peppers (red, green or a combination), seeded and finely chopped

1 or 2 tsp. minced garlic

1 fresh jalapeño, finely chopped

4 to 6 15-oz. cans black-eyed peas with snaps, drained (or 2 lbs. dried black-eyed peas, soaked, cooked and drained)

Must try - Mini ham, cheese, egg muffins!

If you have a 24-muffin pan for mini muffins, here's another use for it (from Rachael Ray). She said this works with lots of other omelette ingredients, too.

• 1/4 pound deli sliced Swiss cheese, finely chopped
• 6 slices Canadian bacon, finely chopped
• 3 Tbsp snipped or chopped chives
• A few grinds black pepper
• 8 eggs
• 2 Tbsp melted butter, or nonstick spray

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix the chopped cheese, Canadian bacon and chives. Season with a few grinds of pepper. 

In a bowl, beat the eggs. 

Brush the muffin tins with melted butter (or spray). Fill the 24 mini-muffin cups halfway to two-thirds with the cheese mixture. Pour beaten eggs into each cup, filling to just below the rim. 

Bake at 375 until golden, about 12 minutes. 

Can be frozen, then popped out each morning and microwaved!

Pizza bites

Fast appetizer; or, as I'm doing, bake ahead and wrap individually for sale :) They can also be frozen on a cookie sheet and then stored in freezer bags until you're ready to bake them.

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound fresh, ground pork sausage
• 10 ounces mozzarella or provolone cheese, cubed
• Bertolli garlic pasta sauce
• pepperoni slices
• 32 ounces cocktail rye bread

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F .
2. In a large skillet, brown ground beef and sausage.
3. Drain grease out of skillet. Stir processed cheese food into the mixture. Continue cooking until cheese melts. Arrange slices of bread on a cookie sheet; top with sauce and then heaping spoonfuls of the mixture.
4. Top with pepperoni slices.
5. Bake 12 to 15 minutes.