Showing posts with label Budget Living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget Living. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

What to do with apples you bought on sale?

The other day at HyVee, I bought four pounds of apples. I thought about making apple sauce or apple butter, but truth be told I'm too lazy to go to all the work it entails--peeling, coring, canning. Now, a cake I can make. And I got lucky enough to find one on my first Google click.

The recipe is from Monica at Lick the Bowl Good and she adapted it from "Southern Cakes." I decided to bake this cake based solely on the picture. It looks amazing. And I really like glazes. That helped, too.

For supper I decided to make sweet and sour meatballs. I have frozen meatballs and hubby gets off at 7pm tonight, so I thought it would be a good late dinner. Now I just have to find the recipe.

There's always something it seems.

So I've tried bits and pieces of the cake. The cake itself tastes a little like a caramel apple and the topping is blondie-like. I think it'll be awesome together, but I won't be trying it until hubby gets home, so that's probably a good thing or it would all be gone. Not that he would care any, because he's not a dessert kind of guy. He wants his meal and that's it.

He's weird.

Now for the meatballs. I made a few changes from the original recipe that I included in my adapted recipe. I had no lemon juice, so I used three tablespoons of cider vinegar. Feeling lazy on this first snow day in Iowa, I didn't chop up an onion, but instead used a bottle of dried onion. And I put them in a crock pot instead of simmering them on the stove. The sauce I microwaved for three minutes to melt the brown sugar.

These were super simple to make and are a great late dinner. I was hoping to have something cooking away in the crock pot during the first snow fall and I did.

(The link for the recipes are in the title.)

(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)
Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze
**adapted**
Apple Cake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups finely chopped apples


Brown Sugar Glaze:
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
3 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon sweetened, condensed milk


For the cake: 
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch pan (round or square) and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.Stir with a whisk to mix everything together.
3. In a large bowl, mix the eggs til light in color and foamy. Add the oil and vanilla and beat well.
4. Stir in the flour mixture with a spoon and continue stirring the batter til the flour disappears. Add the apples and nuts (if using) and stir to mix them into the batter.
5. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Place the hot cake on a wire cake. While it's still hot, prepare the glaze.


For the glaze: 
1. Combine all the ingredients into a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture comes to a gentle boil. Cook for 3-5 minutes.
2. Spoon the hot glaze over the still hot-from-the-oven cake. Let the glazed cake cool completely before serving straight from the pan.


(* )*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

Sweet and Sour Meatballs
**adapted**
Your favorite meatball recipe
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 bottle dried onion
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons vinegar
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons soy sauce

1. In medium saucepan, fry onion in oil until tender. Add all other sauce ingredients and simmer 20 minutes.
2. Place in crock pot on high and cook for two hours.
3. Serve over rice.










Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Living on a budget in a small town.

Hubby and I are living on a very strict budget for the next couple of weeks. Due to a faulty furnace we have just enough money for gas to get back and forth to work. Two weeks living on what's in our freezer and pantry. Two weeks of not being able to buy anything in the store. Two weeks of hoping everything stretches far enough. We wanted to use up the meat from our freezer before we started buying meats on sale again, so I guess we will be now.

Dinner tonight isn't a problem...round steak in the crock pot and oatmeal molasses bread. I found both of these recipes on one of my favorite recipe sites-Food has a very diverse collection of recipes and I do enjoy trying them. Some are major flops in the taste department, but some I find myself making some of them time and again. Since the round steak is still in the crock pot cooking as I type this, I'm not sure if that will be one of them, but I'm pretty sure the oatmeal molasses bread will be.

Both of the recipes I got from Food I altered slightly to fit our own personal tastes.

The round steak and gravy I served over mashed potatoes. It turned out like pot roast. It was very good.

The oatmeal molasses bread was phenomenal. I am definitely going to be making this again. Probably once a week or so. It sort of tasted like fresh whole wheat bread. Or so I thought. Hubby thought it tasted like cornbread.

(Links are in the title.)

(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)
Round Steak and Gravy
2 pounds round steak
1 package dry onion soup mix
1/4 cup water
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 medium onion

1. Slice onions thin--I used a mandolin--and place on the bottom of the crock pot.
2. Place round steak on top of onions.
3. Mix the onion soup mix, water, and cream of mushroom soup together and pour over the top of the round steak.
4. Turn crock pot on low and cook for 8 hours.
5. Slice beef and serve onion gravy over meat and mashed potatoes or rice.

(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)
Oatmeal Molasses Quick Bread
**altered to remove raisins, put it in a cake pan, and make one round loaf**
1 cup fat-free buttermilk (homemade)
1/4 cup oats
1/8 cup unsulphured molasses
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cups unbleached flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda


1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Combine milk, oats, molasses and oil in a bowl.
3. Measure flours by lightly spooning into measuring cups and leveling with a knife. As you may know, "scooping" flour will cause you to use too much.
4. Whisk or sift together flours, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
5. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and stir just until combined.
6. Pour into a greased 8-inch round cake pan.
7. Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes, then for 15 minutes more at 375°F
8. Let stand about 15 minutes before slicing to serve.