An Heirloom Lunch

Our dinners have been sooo good this week that we have had barely any left overs! So...this week is all about a great deli sandwiches for lunch! In my personal opinion a sandwich is rarely a great sandwich without a tomato slice or two!

This week I bought a ton of heirloom tomatoes. I don't know if its the fun colors or the goofy shapes...maybe they just do actually taste better. Whatever it is I love them and have been putting them on everything and they make a boring turkey sandwich a little less boring! 

 

Easy Empanadas!!!!

I remember eating empanadas all the time as a small child. I would go to a friend's house everyday after school and her mom always made the best empanadas. Of course at the time I had no idea what I was eating or how to make them, I just knew they were awesome!!!

Now if you are not sure what an empanada is...well here ya go: 

It is a Spanish or Latin-American turnover with a flaky crust and a spicy or sweet filling.

 Pretty simple...and most certainly delicious

Beef Empanadas 

  

Dough

"For a novice baker, this is the most forgiving dough to work with. The cream cheese allows this pastry some elasticity but still produces tender and flaky results."

 From the book "Mad Hungry," by Lucinda Scala Quinn

• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons, plus more for rolling out the dough
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

 Now this dough may not be the healthiest so if you wanna opt for something a little less fattening go for it...but as I've said before it's all about moderation, if you eat 2 as opposed to 20 I think you'll be fine!

 Directions

1. Process the butter, cream cheese, and cream in a food processor, electric mixer, or by hand to thoroughly combine.
2. Add the flour and salt. Process just until combined and the dough holds together in a ball. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces. Flatten into disks and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling out. If the dough is chilled overnight, take it out 15 minutes before rolling out.
3. Rub flour all over a rolling pin. Working with one dough disk at a time, place the disk on a clean, well-floured surface. Applying some pressure with the rolling pin, roll gently from the center of the dough to the top and bottom edges. Rotate the disk and roll to the top and bottom edges again. Re-flour the work surface and rolling pin, turn the dough over, and continue to roll the dough from the center out to the edges. Turn over and roll again, rotating the disk to ensure even rolling until the dough is about 12 inches in diameter, thin but not transparent. 

*We made our dough the night before and refrigerated it. It is not time consuming but with being busy this week we decided to utilize Sunday night free time to make it!


Filling

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 small green bell pepper, chopped**
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin**
• 3/4 cup pimiento-filled green olives, sliced**
• 3/4 cup raisins (golden)
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt**
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper**
• Several dashes hot sauce**
• 2 large eggs, separated

 

** We forgot the green pepper this week so we upped the onion and added about 3 cloves of garlic. We also just guesstimated on all the spices (a little more than suggested never hurts!). I leave out the olives as well, we are not huge olive fans. And as always my go to hot sauce is sriracha sauce.

Directions

1. To make the filling, heat a large skillet over medium heat, and then swirl in the olive oil. Add the onion and bell pepper. Saute until the onion is translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Raise the heat to high and add the beef. Cook, stirring constantly to brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the cumin and cook for another minute.
2. Stir in the olives, raisins, honey, salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Cook until the meat is golden brown, the liquid has evaporated, and the flavors have blended, about 4 more minutes. Cool the mixture completely in the fridge. Stir in the egg whites.

 

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter or line a baking sheet.
• To form the empanadas, work with half of a disk of dough at a time, rolling out on a floured surface. Using an overturned bowl (about 5 inches across), cut out circles about 3 or 4 at a time from each piece of dough. 
• Gather all dough scraps together, re-roll once, and cut. Place 1/4 cup filling on one side of a dough circle. 

 

• Wet the edges of the dough with water. Fold the dough over to form a half circle. Pinch the edges of the dough together. Crimp the edges with a fork. Repeat the process until all the filling is used. The empanadas can be frozen at this point.

 

 

 

• Place the empanadas on the prepared baking sheet and chill for a few minutes. Prick each pie on top twice with a fork. When ready to bake, beat the egg yolks with 1 tablespoon water. Brush the egg wash over each empanada. 

 

• Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving. The empanadas can be cooled and frozen to reheat in a microwave.

We served our empanadas with green beans. All I did was blanch them for about 3 minutes and then sauteed them for about 10 minutes  with oil, garlic, salt, pepper, pine nuts (throw in last 2-3 mins of cooking) and garnish with Parmesan cheese. 

 

We even had some left over for lunch today!! 

 

 

Weekley Menu: Keeping it Simple

We are really looking forward to our dinners this week! 

Simple. Simple. Simple.

 We have a pretty busy week ahead of us so we wanted to keep things short and simple each night. Keeping things simple doesn't have to mean boring though. Check out the great flavorful things we have planned for this week!

(and our new menu board, I'm in love with it)

*If you remember last week's menu you will notice the stuffed peppers again (oops we had a lazy day last week and pushed those to this week's Sunday meal).

Our New Menu Board from World Market

•  Sunday~ Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers
• Monday~ Empanadas
• Tuesday~ Chicken and Goat Cheese pizza 
• Wednesday~ Spinach and Goat Cheese Frittata 
• Thursday~ Chicken Sausage and Peach Scewers w/ Green Beans

*Side Salads for All

We also stayed under $90.00 this week. Thanks to making use of some things we had left in the freezer. Go us!!!

 Stay tuned for the tonight's Empanada recipe from  
Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys by Lucinda Scala Quinn

Here is a sneak peek of the dough we made for the empanadas

 

Basil Pesto and Freezing Herbs

We made fresh basil pesto on Sunday for our B.L.T. pizza and turkey sandwiches this week, but we still had some leftover. 

Now normally I would have put the leftover pesto in a bowl and said "we will for sure use this for something else soon". Well that never happened and it would end up in the trash....huge waste of money considering how expensive basil and pine nuts are! 

Then I read a great article on preserving herbs and thought I can do this with my pesto sauce as well! Save money and cut back on wasting food, awesome!

All you need to preserve the herbs or sauce is an ice cube tray, freezer bags, oil or water and you're good to go. 

I froze rosemary and thyme in olive oil, but I found it a tad difficult to just "pop" them out like the website had stated. I found myself banging ice trays on the counter top like a mad woman trying to get them out! After about 10 minutes and half the olive oil melted I had gotten all of the now misshapen cubes out, threw them in a bag and back into the freezer. They may not have looked as pretty as I had hoped but they worked just the same. We took a few out of the bag and threw them in a bowl with some chicken, a little extra olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh lemon juice and marinated it overnight...delicious the next day! 

I also froze cilantro, but decided this was something that would probably be better in just water. Herbs like cilantro and parsley are often used as garnishes or finishing ingredients. By freezing them in water I can just dry them off and have fresh garnishes right away! I also found that freezing in water was waaaay easier than olive oil. There was no banging on the counter with this round....which honestly was kinda fun for a few minutes!

As far as freezing the pesto, I just filled the ice cube tray with the remainder of the sauce and froze it over night. They took a little work as well to get out because of the oil, but they turned out fine! Now we can just take a cube or two and throw it over some hot pasta and have fresh basil pesto pasta in a jiffy! 

 Fresh Basil Pesto

pic via Real Simple Magazine

2 cups fresh basil leaves (Trader Joe's Organic Brand)

1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (the REAL stuff)
1/3 cup pignolia (pine) nuts (Trader Joe's has the best deal, refridgerate the remainder to keep them fresh)

4-6 garlic cloves, chopped (we tend to lean towards more garlic)
Salt and ground black pepper (optional) 

Add basil, garlic and pine nuts into a  food processor or blender and pulse several times. 

Turn the processor or blender to on and and add the olive oil in a slow stream. 

Then add cheese, pulse the processor or blender a few more times, add salt and pepper if desired.

And there you have it. Fresh Basil Pesto.

**To make basil pesto mayonnaise just combined 1/2 cup of pesto and 1/3 cup mayonnaise and mix it together...super simple!

Here's what I'll be reading up on over this relaxing weekend:

•   The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table

•   Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

I can't wait to read this one. We recently started buying the real deal olive oil and boy can you see and taste the difference!  

•  Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit

Happy Weekend!

Shop Around

Earlier this week I posted a little about our shopping habits in  

Weekly Menu: Eating Well and Maintaining a Budget

As I was browsing through some inspiration blogs yesterday I came across The Salt , NPR's Food Blog.

I really found their post from yesterday very interesting since I had stated in my post earlier this week:

"After the meals are planned for the week we head to the stores...yes stores not just one giant superstore stocked full of name brand crap! A key to saving money is shopping around and finding local or small business items!"

Check it out....Wake Up Call to Grocery Stores: Young People Shop Around

picture via grocery shopping articles

Weekly Menu: Eating Well and Maintaining a Budget

Staying on a budget and eating good home cooked meals seems like a daunting task to some folks. It certainly used to be for us! 

We we would spend so much money at the grocery store and come home with boxed up frozen (often sodium loaded) meals. We were cooking at home finally, but what we were eating was awful! If we bought anything fresh it often went in the trash due to lazy nights of frozen pizza and  Hamburger Helper. I look back on that now and cringe at the thought of some of the crap we would eat and the amount of money we wasted!

We needed a change and we needed to do it fast....neither of us are getting any younger and we needed to make these changes now before it became that much more difficult. 

We buckled down and really started to dive into making food...slowly but surely we were actually cooking with fresh ingredients. We noticed how much better we felt after eating something that we put all the work into and how much of the crap we were cutting out of our food!  However, we needed a little more structure...coming up with fresh and good meals with little to no planning was better for you but not always better for our bank account. We were still wasting food! 

We started planning out meals for the week on Sunday mornings while eating breakfast and watching Food Network, browsing the many cooking magazines and cook books we had obtained on the quest to eating better.

After the meals are planned for the week we head to the stores...yes stores not just one giant superstore stocked full of name brand crap! A key to saving money is shopping around and finding local or small business items! 

Our favorite stores and farmer's markets for the best products in our area are: 

• Trader Joe's
• The Fresh Market
• Costco
• Grafton Farmers Market 
• Yorktown Market Days 

We try to work with around $90.00 a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our week starts on Sunday night and goes through Thursday night. We usually leave Friday and Saturday open for plans and if we don't have plans we usually end up with leftovers. To make the most of that $90.00 budget we make enough of a dinner item to have for lunch at work the next day.  If we are making smaller portioned meals we buy sandwich and salad fixins' for lunch. We try as hard as we can to steer clear from buying lunch out as it is insanely expensive and unhealthy! As far as breakfast goes on weekdays I stick to green smoothies and Alex sticks to Nature Valley Bars. I will share some of my smoothie recipes in a future post.  

Another key to saving money is finding recipes that are gonna use similar ingredients that week.Unless you grow you own herbs and spices it's hard to get just the small amount you need at the store. Of course if you aren't gonna use that massive bushel of parsley then you can always save it for later.  I'll post soon on how to preserve herbs in olive oil or water! 


AND just so there is no confusion, I'm not guaranteeing that these recipes and menus are a healthy option for you or that they WILL you save money. I just want to share what we find works for us.  Our idea of healthy eating is moderation (you can have that cheeseburger once in a blue moon, it really won't kill you!), minimally processed food (whole wheat pasta, unbleached foods), free range/organic meats, etc. We don't believe in the low fat, zero calorie, added nutrients crap. All of that stuff is engineered to be "good" for you, it's actually just a tone of chemicals! I seriously have a personal vendetta against things like margarine and artificial sweeteners. 

Go natural, you'll feel better! 

So with all of this being said I'd like to share our weekly menu's and recipes from those menus. I hope that by sharing what helped us get on a more healthy and money savvy track will help others do the same! 

Menu for 7/8 to 7/12

Sunday

• Grilled B.L.T. Pizza on Wheat Crust

Monday

• Lemon Marinated Chicken and Spinach/Feta Orzo Salad

 Tuesday

• Bison Brats with Grilled Onions and Peppers

 Wednesday 

• Turkey Sandwiches with Provolone, Red Onion, Tomato and Basil Pesto Mayonnaise

 Thursday

• Philly Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers 

Check back throughout the week for recipe posts from this weeks menu! Enjoy!

**Please bear with me as I get my site back up and running to its former pretty self. For now enjoy the posts! **