Frugal Kitchens 101 - Grinding Your Own Meats

Ground meats especially beef have long held the reputation for a frugal meat choice. While it is true that ground meat is a good way to use cheaper, less tender cuts of meat, the idea that store bought pre-ground meat is a frugal meat choice is a myth. In my opinion a better frugal choice is to buy cheaper cuts of meat then grind them yourself. The reason for this is on any chunk of meat there can be a low level of bacteria, the worst being E. coli. If the meat is ground then left to sit for even a few hours this bacteria can multiple enough that if the meat is improperly cooked it can make you quite sick leaving long term residual effects or worse. The increased surface area greatly aids hiding spots for microbial growth and quicker spoilage times. Complicating this issue is if the commercial meat grinder is used to grind other meats besides beef such as pork or poultry then not proper cleaned cross contamination can occur. A final problem with buying ground meats especially turkey and pork is in smaller communities they simply may not be available on a regular basis. Today's Frugal Kitchens 101 gives a few tips on grinding your own meats.

Grinding your own meats can actually less espensive than buying store bought because you can take advantage of meat sales. The equipment is not expensive either ranging on the lower end about $25 to the higher end of $150. If you have a KitchenAid® stand mixer the grinder attachment will cost about $40. Here's a few tips for grinding meats and poultry:

• Plan on cooking the meat the day you grind it. If you want to grind extra for later meals, cook it then vacuum seal for quick meal starts. If you want to freeze the ground meat raw, grind then vacuum seal and freeze immediately.
  
• Trim any fat, ligment or silver covering and skin from the meat. The silver coating will clog the grinder.
• Cut the meat into strips that will easily feed through the hopper of the grinder.
• Place the strips in the freezer until they are very cold or just starting to freeze.
  
• Put the coarse grinder plate into the grinder and tighten.
• Feed the meat through the hopper one strip at a time, guiding with a food pusher but do not force.
• For best results feed the ground meat through the hopper again with the fine grinder plate. Do not do this with fatty meats; only grind these meats once.
• If you want to grind 2 kinds of meat such as beef followed by chicken the grinder should be thoroughly cleaned before switching to the next meat unless all the ground meat is to be used in the same dish (eg. 3 meat meatloaf).
  

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Three Blog Awards!!!!!!!!

What an honour! Thank-you so very much Polly of Angels in My Garden for awarding me not one but three awards! I gladly accept all three awards. Polly has a great homemaking blog that I'm sure you will enjoy as much as I do. Please take a moment to stop by Polly's blog to say hi.

The first award is You're going places, baby. Recipients of this award have to tell where you see yourself in 10 years.
- In 10 years time I see myself still enjoying my wonderful family and cooking up a storm.

To accept the Beautiful Blogger Award, the recipient must tell 7 things about myself. Here's 7 things about me:

1. I'm continuously looking for ways to reach our goal of an eco-friendly lifestyle.
2. I'm very much a private person who enjoys being a homebody rather than a social butterfly.
3. I love cooking with good ingredients!
4. I grow herbs, vegetables and fruit in raised beds using the square food gardening method combined with companion planting.
5. One of my favourite fair weather activities is fishing.
6. I am a shoe-aholic! I'm not kidding here having several pairs still with price tags an my collection numbers about 55 pairs.
   
7. Photoshop® is my favourite photo editing software.
   

The Sunshine Award is to be passed on to 12 bloggers. I will follow Polly's lead and pass on all three awards to these well deserving bloggers:

1. Margie and Edna's Basement
2. Dances of Dreams
3. The Story of Parenting a Child With Autism
4. Carterville
5. Mimi's Kitchen
6. Everyday Living
7. Grandma's Pattern Book
8. Heart to Heart
9. Lanita's Life on the Farm
10. Mommy's Kitchen
    
11. Smoky Mountain Café
12. The Ramblings of a Working Mom
    

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Shake & Bake Chicken Clone Recipe Revisited

I mentioned yesterday that we were relying on tried and true comfort food meals with our house being recently put on the market. What I'm looking for is good food without a lot of prep work. I'm also looking for meals that rely heavily on our pantry and freezer stores. I'm trying to use at least one food item from both the pantry and freezer for each dinner meal. This will help reduce what we have to move then I can spend a few weeks after moving restocking the pantry and freezer stores.

Shake & Bake Clone

One of our recent meals used up 2 packages of chicken from the freezer and a bit of homemade shake & bake chicken coating from the pantry. Sides included oven baked potatoes topped with cheddar cheese and bacon pieces, and steamed broccoli. It was a nice comfort meal that was easy to put together with little effort.

From time to time in life there are periods of time where it would be so tempting to pick-up take-out or eating out. The problem is a lot of these times the extra time spent getting take-out or eating out actually defeats the purpose by using up time that could be spent dealing with other pressing matters. While the meal was cooking I had time to work on the house so it was a frugal use of time. At the same time we ended up with a nice comfort meal without much effort.

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Bacon, Bacon and More Bacon

With all the recent changes with our house being on the market I have been leaning on the old, tried and true comfort meals. This is great for us because we have awesome home cooked meals. It's not so good as an author of a cooking blog needing new blog fodder. So every once in awhile a cooking blogger has to add a bit of filler.

Bacon is one of the major food groups! Bacon makes everything taste better :) Today I will leave you with a short video clip I took of bacon frying to be used for twice baked potatoes. Now don't you just wish you had smell-o-vision?

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Kitchen Quick Tips - Potato Salad

Potatoes for potato salad have a tendency to get crumbly and slightly water logged when boiled. Prevent this by steaming the potatoes to al dente for perfect potato salad every time.

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Cod with Organic Vegetables (Low Fat)

I use organic growing methods for my gardens so when I buy produce out of season I like to buy certified organic if at all possible. Last weekend one of our kids picked up a basket of organic produce for us from Pfenning's Organic Farm in Baden, Ontario. The basket contained Jona Gold apples, blood oranges, rainbow carrots, blueberries, English cucumber, yellow onions, red leaf lettuce, red potatoes and button mushrooms. The cost for all this great organic produce was $17. In comparison to fruits and vegetables that are not grown using organic methods, this produce is more expensive. However, more grocery stores are now carrying organic produce so as the demand grows, the price will decrease somewhat. Why is buying organic produce important?

Organic Produce

Organic growers use no chemical fertilizers, herbicides or fumigants so there are none of these residues remaining in the food. The food is free of toxic chemical and growing organically keeps toxic chemicals out of the air, soil and water. In addition to this, growing organically provides a safer working environment for field workers. Growing and/or buying organic produce is:

• eco-friendly
• socially responsible
• healthiers, free of toxic chemicals
  
• supporting sustainable farming practices

In some but not all cases, buying organic produce will cost a bit more. The reason for this is two fold. There is less demand for organic produce. Organic methods are more labour intensive. For example weeds are manually removed when growing organically rather than using a chemical herbicide. Organic farms tend to be smaller with lower yields. In addition to this, organic produce is not always blemish free and perfect looking contrary to what consumers have come to expect. As a result the uninformed consumer doesn't buy organic produce on the basis of looks and cost even though it is a healthier choice.

Ingredients

Pictured are the organic vegeatables (top) and cod (bottom) used to make an easy, low fat meal. Rainbow carrots are carrots that have been selectively bred to red, purple, yellow and white. Each have their own unique characteristics and flavours. When used as a blend they have a nice eye appeal as well as interesting flavours, quite gourmet. Rainbow carrots can easily be grown in the home garden so this will be one of my new varieties to try growing this year. Red potatoes are always a delight! We love them steamed.

Our butchershop has Highliner brand cod fillets on sale for $5.99 per pound, a $4 per lb savings. We bought 10 fillets which is enough for 2 meals for 2 adults. Cod is a lean white fish with a mild flavour and firm texture that can be baked, steamed, poached, pan fried or coated English style in batter then deep fried. It can also be used in chowders. Cod has 105 calories per 3.5 ounce (about 1 pictured fillet) serving making it a health conscious choice. It is also an economical choice in terms of price. As with all fish, it is important not to over cook cod.

The Meal

We coated the cod fillets with Krusto Fish Batter mix then pan fried until just golden. This is a fish coating that can be used dry as we did here or can be made into a batter for deep frying. We steamed the red potatoes and rainbow carrots together. Notice the contrasting colours of the carrots. The bag we got only had yellow and 2 shades of orange carrots so I will be looking for one with both red and white carrots. Adding in a few regular carrots would give a bit more contrast as well. Rounding out the meal was a small spinach side salad making for a healthy, low fat meal.

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Peanut Butter Rice Krispies

Easy snacks are always welcomed. Even though we don't eat a lot of them, squares always fit the bill. Squares are easy to make, low cost and they just fit that sweet tooth. They are ideal for parties, get togethers, birthday parties and school bake sales.

Peanut Butter Rice Krispie

Rice krispie squares are just one of those tried and true recipes. They are easy to make and everyone likes them. I came across this spin on rice krispie squares that paired peanut butter with chocolate. Now you can't get much better than chocolate with peanut butter so I just had to make a batch of these. These are definite keepers :)

Peanut Butter Rice Krispies
modified from: Jean Paré, Company's Coming 150 Delicious Squares, Edmonton, Alberta. 1981. Pp. 9.

⅔ c sweeetened condensed milk
¼ c peanut butter
¼ c light corn syrup
½ c brown sugar
4 c rice cereal

½ c chocolate chips
2 tbsp peanut butter

Place the rice cereal in a large mixing bowl. Combine the first 4 ingredients in saucepan. Cook until well mixed and thickened, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Pour over the rice cereal and mix well. Pour the mixture into a greased 9" x 9" baking dish.

Melt the chocolate chips and peanut butter. Pour over the cereal mixture, spreading evenly. Place in refrigerator until well chilled. Cut into squares.

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010