Frugal Kitchens 101 - Saving on Gifts From the Kitchen

The past two Frugal Kitchens 101 have focused on when the best time is to buy all things kitchen related.  As a reminder, the best times are just before Christmas, the end of January and the two weeks before Mother's Day.  It's not that you can't find good bargains on kitchen related items the rest of the year, just you have a better chance of getting excellent deals during these time frames.  This week's Frugal Kitchens 101 will focus on how to save money when making gifts from the kitchen, and we all know these are some of the best gifts to give or receive.

Gifts from the kitchen require raw ingredients and containers.  That means you need to do a bit of planning and frugal shopping prior to making your homemade goodies.  It is a bit easier than you would think though.

• sales - Traditionally, about 6 weeks prior to Christmas the baking ingredients will go on sale and they will remain at reduced prices until at least Boxing Day.  Take advantage of any of these sales to restock your pantry and make gifts from the kitchen like cake mixes, cookies in a jar or regular holiday baking.
• buy in advance - Certain ingredients can be purchased on sale well in advance of the actual assembly process for mixes.  
• buy in bulk - The bulk food stores are a perfect resource for making up several batches of your favourite mixes (eg. hot chocolate, seasoning mixes, cake and bread mixes) for gift giving.  You can buy as much or as little as you need.  If you do not have a bulk food store, opt for the largest sized package with the smallest unit price for those ingredients you need a lot of to put your homemade mixes together (eg. flour, sugar, pasta, etc).
• plan ahead - I know it is hard to think of Christmas gift giving in May but if you are home canning with the intent of gift giving you need to.  Make a batch of whatever specifically for gift giving and keep it away from your own pantry stock.  Know how many containers you will need and what you will be using as far as containers.  In general, two quarts of berries will give a yield of 4 - 250 ml/half pint jars.  So when canning for your home needs, simply make a separate batch for gift giving.  If you are making mixes, assemble all the ingredients then it is easy to make them in about 15 minutes of time.  Making dry mixes is as simple as assembling the ingredients unless you are using an ingredient that has been home dried.  In that case, you will need to dry enough of that ingredient in addition to your own needs.
• KISS - When it comes to homemade gifts from the kitchen, use a bit of creativity but rely on KISS (keep it simple silly).  
• containers - Buy these ahead as you can find them on sale.  Mason jars are the norm for home canned foods but can also be used for homemade mixes.  They will cost between $5 and $12 depending on the style and if bought on sale if bought new but used mason jars work just as well.  You can find these through freecycle, Craig's List and resale stores.  Just be sure you aren't paying more than new would cost.  New mason jars come with lids and rings.  If buying used, you will have to buy these separately.  A dozen box that includes both will cost about $3.50 but if you have a lot of rings, the cheapest source I have found for canning lids is Dollarama at $1.25 per dozen.  The dollar and department stores are also the least expensive places to buy gift style plastic and metal containers although specialty craft store (eg. Michael's) also have rather good prices.  

Ontario Produce

Ontario is a mecca for an abundance of locally grown produce.  There are farm stands, orchards, farmer's markets and foodie events galore pretty much year round.  Even during the winter months,  locally grown Ontario produce grown in greenhouses is available in the grocery stores.  The best time to buy produce is when it is in season.  That means produce like apples, cabbage, root vegetables, onions and winter squashes are at rock bottom prices.

We returned from our fall vacation to our vacation home in Florida on October 23, a Tuesday but in reality it was into the wee hours of October 24 before we actually got home.  On Thursday, the new flyers arrived.  Oh my gosh, No Frills had 10 lb bags of carrots, beets, potatoes and onions on sale for $1.88.  I picked up one of each.  For this time of year, this really isn't the best price if you want to drive to get the produce but for an in town price it is rather good especially for the carrots and beets.  I have managed in the past to get 50 lb of potatoes for $3.99 (in store special) and they routinely go for $7.99 but No Frills doesn't carry the 50 lb bags very often.  If they do, it is usually as an in store special.

Now, I was beyond exhausted from our vacation partly due to the extensive home canning I had done prior to leaving home combined with my husband's health problems that had him hospitalized for five days just as tomatoes were starting.  I had just wound up the tomato canning for the season at over 200 jars of home canned tomato products.  The price for the carrots, onions and beets was really good though so I could not resist the sale.  Here I am, exhausted from before our vacation, exhausted from our vacation (lots of company, flight delay) so getting right back into preserving food only a day after getting home was not the ideal plan but when opportunity knocks you can bet I will answer regardless of how exhausted I am.  So for, $7.52 I ended up with 40 lb of gorgeous Ontario produce to enjoy!

Crabby Bill's Seafood Co. in Clearwater Beach, Florida

When we are at our vacation home in Florida we often meet up with family and friends who are either visiting or living in Florida.  Our vacation home is located about mid-way between Tampa and Orlando making it an ideal, convenient location for meeting up with family and friends staying at Disneyworld and it is in the general location that is popular with Canadian snowbirds.  We also have family in area that live here year round.  This is always special times for us because we don't get to see them very often.  Friends of ours live in Clearwater Beach, Florida for about 6 months of the year.  During our fall vacation in October we met up with them for a lovely chat over a rather tasty meal at Crabby Bill's Seafood Co.  Crabby Bill's Seafood Co has six locations in the Treasure Island area on the Golf Coast of central Florida.  We visited the Clearwater Beach location located at 37 Causeway Blvd in Clearwater, Florida.  Crabby Bill's Seafood Co was founded by Bill and Dolores Loder in 1968.  The current CEO is their son Matt.

We really enjoy our seafood, usually having one  to three fish and/or seafood weekly.  I have to say I was very excited when we decided to buy our vacation home in Florida.  That quickly turned into disappointment.  While we have found some good seafood offerings, they are not what I expected for Florida.  The warmer waters give a different texture to the flesh, almost borderline mushy so I tend to stick with firmer textured choices in seafood.

We ordered the gator nuggets ($7.99) as an appetizer.  This is pieces of gator tail dusted in seasoned flour then flash fried and served with stone sauce.  Gator has quickly become one of my favourites in Florida.  The texture is firm and the taste is almost like frog legs but with a bit more depth.  It is usually served breaded, deep fried and with a zippy sauce as an appetizer.  The stone sauce was nice and flavourful but lacked the zip normally served with gator.

One of our friends ordered the steamed shrimp, served cold as an entée.  The generous 1 lb shrimp portion was delicious looking.  It was sprinkled with a little seasoning salt something that really isn't necessary with shrimp.  Shrimp is often served with seafood cocktail sauce as an appetizer which gives a bit of zing to the shrimp.  On the other end of the spectrum, shrimp lends itself nicely to creamy based sauces.

Shrimp is very easy to cook at home because it has a colour coded doneness factor.  Raw shrimp is grey but turns a salmony pink when cooked.  It can be boiled, steamed, or grilled.  Just don't over cook shrimp otherwise it gets rubbery.  To duplicate this recipe at home, choose large raw shrimp (frozen or fresh).  If frozen thaw.  Steam the shrimp in a steamer basket.  This keeps the flavour of the shrimp better than boiling in my opinion.  Remove the shrimp when the shell is a salmon pink and the flesh is opaque.  Cool.  Sprinkle lightly with seasoning salt.  Serve with a couple of wedges of lemon.

My husband ordered the grouper dinner ($19.99)  Grouper is a type of white fish that is fairly common in Florida.  The fish was served with mashed potatoes and green beans.  This is fairly close to the way I would serve grouper at home if I could find it.  Grouper is a mild flavoured fish with nice texture.  They are often used to make fish tacos and sandwiches in Florida so finding grouper in the grocery stores is fairly easy.

Crabby Bill's heavily seasoned the grouper with a seasoning salt that really took away from the mild flavoured fish.  In general, when seasoning fish use the like goes with like method.  Use strong herbs (eg. rosemary) and flavourings with strong flavoured fish like salmon and milder flavourings (eg. lemon, lemon pepper) with mild fish.  Never season fish to the point it masks its flavour.  The flavour should enhance rather than mask the flavour.

I ordered the frog leg dinner ($10.99) served with green beans and mashed potatoes.  The frog legs were delightful, something I always enjoy to the point I have cooked frog legs at home.  Frog legs are usually lightly coated with seasoned flour then deep fried until golden brown.  Crabby Bill's did a nice job with the frog legs.  I was impressed!

Quite often restaurants will resort to serving canned vegetable or use instant potatoes rather than the real McCoy.  I can always tell if the vegetables were canned because I pick up a metal taste.  Crabby Bill's did not do this.  The green beans were obviously cooked from fresh perfectly to al dente.  The mashed potatoes were also freshly made.  Now, I am not above instant potatoes for my emergency preparedness stock or home canned green beans (we eat a lot of those) but when I am paying for a meal in a restaurant, I expect the food to be cooked from scratch using fresh ingredients.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this particular restaurant in their small chain as a 7.  That means I would go there again but it wouldn't be my first choice.  The atmosphere was pleasant, and I got the impression most of the food served was cooked from scratch using fresh ingredients.  Freshly prepared food is the only reason I gave this restaurant a higher rating.  The service was adequate, somewhat friendly but definitely not top notch as they were quite inattentive which is surprising since the food is well worth the extra effort of good staff service.  The prices were decent with our total for four with drinks coming in at $93.58.  In general, this restaurant is a bit too heavy handed on the generic, season everything with, seasoning salt.  To me, that is a major flaw, a definite sign of a cook stuck in a rut, not interested in putting a bit of pizazz into his or her cooking.   The nice thing is all of the food we enjoyed there can easily be made at home.

Open Faced Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

My Mom was a ripe old age of 56 when I came to be and let me tell you she could cook!  She had been through the Great Depression and two World Wars.  More importantly she was a child of 11 from poor immigrant farmers.  She was actually born on the ship between England and Canada, but that is a whole other story!  My gosh she could cook, good old fashioned home style cooking.  All those recipes were tucked safely in her head, sure to please and yet long forgotten as the dementia became worse.  My Mom originally cooked on coal and wood but when I was a kid, she cooked on natural gas.  Both the burners and oven needed to be lit using a match.  Her household chore as a child had been to stoke the fire so to her the natural gas was a treat.  She was also quite frugal so her cook stove was narrower than the normal 30 - inches.  Part of this was due to her refusing to buy more than what she needed but part was not wanting to look pretentious to her family and friends.

Melted cheese on bread is a classic.  Even Johanna Spyri (1881) wrote about how much Heidi enjoyed the melted cheese with bread her Grandfather often made her.  When I was growing up, I never knew what a grilled cheese sandwich was, or at least they way grilled cheese sandwiches are usually made.  My Mom made these amazing open faced grilled cheese done under the broiler of her gas stove.  There is just something comforting about these sandwiches.  The cheese is warm and gooey while the bread is crunchy around the edges and soft in the middle.

All you need to make these delicious open faced grilled cheese sandwiches is bread and cheddar cheese.  Don't use American cheese slices as real cheddar really makes these sandwiches delightful.  I either slice or grate the cheddar cheese.  Then I place sliced bread on a Silpat lined baking sheet and place the cheese on top.  I bake at 350°F until the cheese melts then turn on the broiler and broil until the cheese starts to bubble and the bread is golden brown around the edges.  I place the cooked sandwiches on wire cooling rack for serving.  This prevents the bottom from becoming soggy.

While I have been able to get good results using an electric oven, the results are considerably better using a gas oven.  Electric heat is a dry heat which is fine for certain foods and for most of our married life, we have had an electric cook stove and oven.  However, electric heat can dry certain foods especially baked fish and foods like the open faced grilled cheese sandwiches.  When natural gas is burning, it releases water into the air which is quite noticeable on cold days by the condensation on the windows.  When the oven is first lit, there is condensation on the oven door as well.  I think this bit of moisture is what makes the difference, giving better results. for a lot of baked foods.