Fallen Souffle is now Bowl of Berries! The new blog will feature recipes as well as the author’s articles on life, such as travel logs, gardening, restaurant reviews and more. Check out this inaugural post for the Best Blueberry Muffins.
The Cool Food Blogroll has been updated. You can look up archives on Fallen Souffle here.
For the Econofest Project, I have shared some of my favorite tips and tricks for saving money in and out of the kitchen. Throughout the project, I have sited several sources that I would now like to combine for easy reference. Here are some of my favorite places to find great information on cooking, food, and saving money:
Eating Well: Website for the magazine, full of free recipes as well as health and diet information.
Everyday Food: Another magazine subscription, Everyday Food has started including recipes using pantry staples and budget items.
Food and Wine: Free recipes from the magazine, with information on wine (of course).
Ideal Bite: An excellent earth-friendly website that “offers bite-sized ideas for light green living.” Sign up for the daily email tips, like this one, to learn quick and easy strategies for saving the planet.
Love Food Hate Waste: A UK-based campaign to raise awareness and reduce food waste. The website is full of ideas, recipes, and information on reducing food waste.
MyRecipes.com: A recipe collection pulled from magazines such as Cooking Light, Real Simple, Southern Living, and more. This has an excellent enhanced search option and features interesting articles.
Real Age: More of a health site than food, Real Age does offer great nutritional advice and healthy recipes.
Real Simple: Not only a great online recipe collection, but other tidbits about cleaning, storage, organizing, and other nifty household tips.
Start Making Choices: Another health and fitness website, but with good advice on healthy cooking and budget-friendly shopping.
Vital Juice Daily: A website devoted to health of the mind, body and spirit. Offering free daily email tips, VJD has a “thirst for a healthy life” and shares this philosophy with readers.
WebMD: WebMD is more than a symptom checker website! Interesting articles on health and fitness, and tips on healthy cooking and eating.
wikiHow: User-edited how-to manual, find articles on a variety of food topics and cooking techniques.
Wise Bread: One of my favorite sites, Wise Bread has an awesome archive packed full of frugal ideas for house and home. It is a treasure chest of goodies for those looking to save money and possibly help save the planet.
Hopefully, the Econofest Project has helped everyone save a little money just in time for the holiday season. Use these resources to find more tips, tricks, and information on saving money. Be on the lookout for more recipes and special projects coming soon!
Are you constantly panicking over what to make for dinner? Do you make countless trips to the grocery store over the course of the week for “just one more thing” to make a meal? There is a solution to prevent those hurried attempts to make tonight’s dinner: a pantry so well stocked that you can whip up a dozen or so different options in no time flat.
What makes a well-stocked pantry? The answer depends on your tastes, lifestyle, and family needs. Your perfect pantry should include items that everyone in the household enjoys eating on a regular basis. For some, that might mean lentils and curry powder and for others it might mean pasta and mariana sauce (for some of us, it could even mean both!).
Here is a basic list of pantry staples, adapted from The Perfect Panty:
Sea salt and pepper
Olive oil, vegetable oil, and/or canola oil
Chicken or vegetable stock
Dried beans
Dried pasta
Canned tomatoes (whole, crushed, diced)
Cinnamon
Cumin
Honey
Lemon
Onion
Garlic
Rice
Balsamic Vinegar
Canned vegetables
If you are a baker, you will also want to include flour, sugar, oats, baking soda/powder, chocolate chips, and other must-have supplies. You can also think of your freezer as an extension of your pantry, stocking it with frozen fruits and vegetables, meat, and stock. Look for markdowns on meat near the sell-by date and store in a freezer-ready bag or container.
These are merely suggestions, you will need to adjust your list accordingly. Be sure to include ingredients that will allow you to make your sure-fire, never-fail crowd pleasers. For example, I always have a few special ingredients on hand: golden raisins, coconut milk, hoisin sauce, curry powder, spaghetti sauce, jasmine rice, and gingerroot (which stores great in the freezer). I also have a plethora of spices to use, including paprika, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, dried herbs, and more.
Once you have your perfect pantry list, keep those items on hand to make a last-minute meal. This will prevent those pesky last-minute trips to the grocery store that suck up the food budget. Hopefully, having a personally created pantry will also inspire you to cook more at home and eat out less!
For more assistance, check out these articles from wikiHow on How to Stock a Kitchen Pantry and How to Organize a Pantry. Then, if you want to have a little fun, see How to Make Facials from Pantry Ingredients.
Revisit my post from last year, Turkey all the time!
Enjoy these 10 dish ideas to eat up your Thanksgiving favorites without getting bored.
Breakfast: Turkey-Egg Biscuits
Layer leftover turkey, fried eggs, cheese, and even gravy inside warmed biscuits.
Lunch: Turkey Wraps
Roll turkey, mustard or mayo, and chopped spinach in to a whole-wheat wrap.
Afternoon Snack: Pumpkin Pie Treats
Top leftover pumpkin or apple pie with whipped topping and leftover cranberry sauce.
Dinner: Turkey Shepard’s Pie
Combine stuffing, gravy, chopped turkey, and vegetables in a 2 or 3 quart baking dish. Top with mashed potatoes or pureed sweet potatoes. Bake at 325F until warmed through.
Late-Night Snack: Turkey-Cranberry Sandwich
Using leftover biscuits or bread, stack cheese slices and turkey then top with cranberry sauce. Serve cold.
Breakfast in Bed: Biscuits & Jam
Toast leftover biscuits and top with cranberry sauce or sweet potatoes.
Next-Day Lunch: Hot Turkey Sandwiches
Simmer turkey and gravy in a small saucepan. Spoon over biscuits or a layer of stuffing. Top with mashed potatoes and more gravy.
Super Snack: Sweet Potato Pie
Puree sweet potatoes with maple syrup, cinnamon, and butter. Pour into a prepared pie crust. Bake until warmed through and golden brown. Top with whipped topping or cranberry sauce.
Dinnertime Side Dish: Loaded Mashed Potatoes
Stir leftover corn, peas, and other vegetables into mashed potatoes. Top with butter or gravy.
Dessert For Two: Pie Crust Mix-Up
Scoop pieces, crust and all, into champagne flutes or dessert dishes, mixing flavors. Create layers with whipped topping and cranberry sauce or sweet potatoes.
Do you have tons of subscriptions to magazines? Well, in most cases you can cancel those subscriptions, because most magazines are placing content online, free of charges. If you subscribe to any food or cooking magazines, consider checking out their websites. Here are my favorite food magazines, in Internet form:
Real Simple: Not only a great online recipe collection, but other tidbits about cleaning, storage, organizing, and other nifty household tips.
Everyday Food: All of the recipes from the magazine, plus other Martha Stewart publications such as Martha Stewart Living, Body & Soul, and even the now debunked Blueprint.
Food & Wine: Quite a pricey magazine subscription, I’ve found most recipes available online along with all the wine advice you will ever need.
Eating Well: Great healthy recipes without the publication price. Like many food and cooking websites, this one offers free email newsletters as well.
Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset and more are all part of the awesome recipe collection on MyRecipes.com (Real Simple is also part of the recipe network).
Newspapers also publish great local recipes, the best way to find these hidden gems is to use a news search engine like Google News and type in the search criteria “recipes” or a specific recipe you are looking for like “soup” or “casseroles.”
In case you have not seen or heard, the Food Network now has a magazine publication, but most recipes are still available online for free.
