Welcome to our kitchen that truly is the heart of our home! One of life's greatest pleasures is enjoying good food with family and friends. Here you will find recipes, tips for frugal cooking, how-tos for food preservation especially canning and anything else food related. Tea is brewing and warm cookies are fresh from the oven. Please sit a spell and enjoy your stay.
When cutting cooking roll out the dough directly on the cookie sheet. Cut the cookies then remove the excess from around the cut cookies for perfectly shaped cookies. If adding sprinkles or sugar, place the cookie cutter back onto the cut cookie then sprinkle and lightly press. Remove the frame and your cookies are now perfect for baking.
I'm a firm believer that if you can buy a food item pre-made chances are very good you can make it yourself. Oh, there are exceptions to this but for the most part it rings true. Over the holiday season I noticed a certain food company advertising their frozen sweet potato fries. Well this was just something I had to try, not their product but a homemade version of it. We don't buy frozen French fries as it is preferring fresh cut to frozen so I picked up a couple of sweet potatoes for this appetizer.
Sweet Potato Fries
Sweet potatoes are a deep orange fleshed vegetable that actually differs from Yams of which they are often confused with. Yams are of African origin with a dark skin, lighter flesh and somewhat smaller than sweet potatoes sold in North America. While the two species are not related the terms sweet potatoes and yams are used interchangeably in North America even though they are sweet potatoes not true yams.
The sweet potato fries served with pure maple syrup were quite delightful! They made a great appetizer. Deep frying does concentrate the sugar content in the sweet potatoes which plays off nicely with the crispy, caramelized skin. Pure maple syrup was the perfect dip to accompany the sweet potato fries.
Method: Wash and cut the sweet potato fries using a French fry cutter. Deep fried the fries at 180ºC/350ºF until golden brown. Remove from deep fryer. Drain then serve with a dipping bowl of pure maple syrup.
My gosh, looking back at the cooking done in our kitchen in 2009 it is difficult to say where the focus was. Home food preservation was definitely one of the priorities with canning coming out in the lead. There were a lot of interesting foods coming out of the kitchen as well. Not so surprisingly more comfort foods and soups were made somewhat reflective of a year filled with not the best weather and a slower economy. It did become the year of the mixes and I even shared a neat way using a mason jar with your blender when making homemade mixes, sauces and dips. Over all pork was the central meat of the year thanks to the H1N1 misinformation resulting in pork dropping to rock bottom prices. However this year we did a lot more experimenting with wild game such as venison, goose and moose. It also became a year for experimenting with making gourmet tea and coffee drinks at home. One of the most interesting things we did as a couple in the kitchen was hold a contest called He Said/She Said during the month of October. It was a lot of fun!
The biggest change in our kitchen in 2009 was the return of my beloved garden specifically the herb bed. While we only put in two beds rather late along with our container garden is was wonderful being able to go out and pick an abundance of fresh produce minutes before serving. I'm so looking forward to the changes that will come with the garden expansioun this year that will see the growing space more than double!
The second biggest change in our kitchen was my downdraft system was finally hooked up. This is a necessary component to use the indoor grill cartridge on my Jenn-Air® range. We moved here in June of 2007 but plumbing issues quickly overtook our lives. I kid you not after dealing with over 3-inches of water in our house several times, major plumbing reconstuction including digging up lawns to run new lines and using a porta-johnny for a week I hope you understand when I say I really don't want to see my plumber anytime soon! Oh and the plumbing issues were not quick or cheap to fix either but they were quite disruptive. So the downdraft system kept getting pushed back mainly because we had to drill through an 18-inch concrete wall. Since we grill outside year round it just ended up not being a high priority.
During 2009 we continued on our eco-friendly kitchen trend removing as much plasticware and disposable wraps from the kitchen as possible. At the end of 2009 we are about 85% plastic free when it comes to food storage containers. moved away entirely from buying any pre-ground meats other than what comes from our bulk meat purchases. We also returned to making buttermilk, ricotta cheese and sour cream at home to further reduce food containers coming into the house.
Overall 2009 was a wonderful year in our kitchen but 2010 promises to be even better!
Bon Appétit!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2009
A year ago I started running the Frugal Kitchens 101 feature every Monday. When I first started writing the features I had a few doubts and but over the year they have become quite popular. I think one that thing that appeals to many about this feature is all aspects of the kitchen are covered. Over the past year I've shared my tips not only for saving on your food dollars but also on topics such as saving on energy used in your kitchen to shopping for food and anything else related to running a frugal kitchen. Kitchen equipment has even been discussed so I think it has been quite interesting with something for everyone.
Frugal Kitchens 101 will remain a feature of this blog airing every Monday for the upcoming year. I have a lot of ideas to share with you as I explore new ways to make my kitchen a bit more frugal. This year promises to be an adventure in frugal kitchens as I reach out a bit beyond the basics. This year Hydro One will have most of Ontario on Time of Use (TOU) pricing that will result in the price per kWh go from 5.6¢ to 9.2¢ during high usage hours that will directly affect the cost of meal preparation during the week. This amounts to 44% of our electric bill with the remaining 56% being service charges some of them directly affected by kWh uses. So expect throughout the year to see a bit more on saving electricity in the kitchen and perhaps an investigation into solar cooking methods.
