Freezing our Assets (off)

Yep, it’s damn cold here in Ottawa, leading to a lot of staying indoors and cooking. Which is leading, somewhat ironically, to some good use of my freezer. My hubby is out, and the kids are miraculously both asleep, so I thought I’d write a little post about how things have been going with that particular new appliance.

First of all, I will reiterate just how happy I am that I bought it back in August. I probably haven’t put it to ideal use, but it has been a wonderful tool for organizing meals. With the freezer, I can cook when I have the time, and put stuff away for when I have less time. It’s been a wonderful way to save money and time, not to mention the brainwork involved in planning meals.

Over these past few months, I’ve learned some things about what freezes well and what doesn’t. I’ve discovered it’s true: potatoes don’t freeze well. They turn sortof mealy and mushy and unappentizing. Beans also go a bit weird in the freezer, acquiring a strange spongy texture. I’ve also discovered that anything dry in chunks tends to get drier and freezer burnt.

But there are many things that have been great in the freezer, especially meaty saucy things like spaghetti and chili. Chicken broth is great because I usually make big quantities and then freeze in 2-3 cup packs. When I need some for soup or a sauce, I just defrost what I need. For all of these liquidy things I’ve fallen in love with Zip-Lock baggies. Just fill up and squeeze all the air out, then lay flat on top of one another and they take up so little space. Not very eco-friendly but you can re-use the baggies.

I was surprised to find out that my pizza packages worked really well. I made pizza dough and sauce the other day and decided to make one and put 2 in the freezer. So I portioned out the dough and slipped the 2 extras into baggies with a little oil in them. I then put 1/2 cup of sauce in a baggie for each pizza. For the cheese, I shredded a whole 500 g block of mozzarella and divided it into 3 portions. For the 2 extra pizza packages, I put the 3 smaller baggies-dough, sauce and cheese-together into a larger zip-lock. The other night I tried one of the pizza packs, which I had placed in the fridge overnight to defrost, and was thrilled with the result! Tasty crust, fresh-tasting sauce and melty yummy cheese, just like day 1.

Another good find was regarding the tomatoes I froze in the summer. Late in the summer I got a big bunch of heirloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market. I used some and froze some whole in zip-lock bags. I had read somewhere that all you do to skin them is dunk the frozen tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds and the skins peel right off. Tonight I realized I had no canned tomatoes for my veggie chili, so I grabbed a bag of frozen ones. Luckily it worked like a charm!

Some other slightly stranger things I’ve got stowed away in there include crabapple juice and pulp which I intend to make into jelly and butter respectively; spinach and blueberry puree, sweet potato puree and acorn squash puree, waiting to sneak their way into some food  some day soon; baggies of wine which I will use for cooking . . .

But the strangest item of all requires a word of warning: If you come over to my house, don’t get tempted by that ice cream container sitting in the freezer. It’s not ice cream. It’s a placenta.

A little change

You probably didn’t notice, but I’ve made a little change to the blog. It’s an important change, which should give me some liberty to write about some other things that are going on in my life lately. That is, changing the name from “Frugal + Urban” to “Frugal Urban Mama”.

Not that this is going to suddenly morph into a “mommy blog”, whatever that means . . . I was just feeling a bit cramped by the name, and wanted to feel freer to talk about some of the stuff that’s happening with the kids & family.

I’m maintaining the direction of Frugal + Urban topics, but adding the Mama stuff in case I need to rant once in awhile!

I hope this is okay with y’all.

Sneaky Chef Chocolate Cupcakes: It’s a Win!

Well, I finally got around to trying a recipe out of The Sneaky Chef, the Chocolate Cupcakes, and I have to say they were fantastic! I’m not going to post the recipe here because I want you to go out and buy the book, but let me just tell you they contained whole wheat flour, blueberries, and . . . spinach! Yes, spinach. But it turns out, spinach has almost no flavour on its own; it is totally masked by the blueberries to make what Missy Chase Lapine calls “Purple Puree”, one of her power-packing additive mixtures.

The other genius trick employed with these cupcakes is to use candy sprinkles as a texture decoy to distract from any textural difference the whole wheat flour could cause. She recommends using sprinkles, chocolate chips, and crushed crunchy whole-grain cereal as textural cover-ups where necessary. This is just one more of her thirteen strategies for healthier kid-friendly eating.

I gave a few of the cupcakes to friends as  well, so I’ll update with their comments if they have any. I was a bit nervous, especially since the “icing” is actually a mixture of nonfat milk powder, icing sugar and water, but after trying them myself I’m fairly certain they will have gone down just fine!

Nerdmobile cleaning cart

I blogged about it awhile back, but I finally did it: created my very own cleaning cart! And yes it is as exciting as it sounds (that is, if it sounds like the most exciting thing ever!).

What you see in the photo is my version of this cleaning cart. On the front is a blue bag for laundry, the inside is for items that belong in another room, with a red bag for small things or things that belong in my daughter’s room. On the back I have a garbage bag and a recycling bag.

This is the tidying version; when I’m doing cleaning too I have a tray with my cleaning stuff and rags that goes on top. The only additional things I have to lug are the broom, mop or vacuum if I’m using them.

The idea of the cart is that you set yourself up to sweep through the house once, tidying (and/or cleaning) as you go, with no time-wasting back-tracking to put stuff back where it belongs. Once I heard the idea, I was intrigued. Once I tried it, I was sold! It really works. It’s super fast to just stick things into the appropriate bags in the cart and move along. Otherwise, I tend to pick up a sock and bring it into the bedroom, there noticing a coffee cup and bringing it to the kitchen, where I notice that the stovetop is dirty, which I clean, and before I know it an hour has gone by and nothing substantial has been accomplished. With the cart, even if I can completely clean/tidy one room before a minor emergency distracts me, my life is seriously improved.

One fantastic additional thing I discovered about this cart is that my preschooler was really into helping me tidy up the living room! I guess she enjoyed sorting the stuff into the different bags. We actually tidied up the entire living room together, which really helped my sanity, and occupied at least 15 minutes of our time.

So, if you have a handy shopping cart like the one in the picture, try out the Nerdmobile technique and let me know how it works for you!

Another Recipe: Granola

As you can imagine, I’ve been pretty busy lately. I hardly have time to check my email let alone post a blog entry. But this recipe has been screaming out for posting lately. Which is because I’ve been making it alot. Which is because we’ve been eating it alot. In fact, the only problem with this recipe is how quickly it gets eaten around here! I’ve actually been known to take spoonfuls out of my husband’s bowl because he has taken “too much”! He didn’t like that.

I love this granola: it’s easy, fairly low-cost, and absolutely delicious. It’s based on the recipe in the Moosewood Restaurant’s New Classics cookbook, but with a few modifications. Here you go:

Moosewood Granola

4 1/2 cups old fashioned oats

1/2 cup each sliced almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coarsely chopped walnut pieces, sesame seeds, wheat germ, large flake coconut (sweetened or unsweetened–it’s up to you) or combination of any of those

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup liquid sweetener (maple syrup, fake maple syrup, honey, corn syrup, golden syrup, etc.) with 1-2 tbsp molasses added to total 1/2 cup.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all dry ingredients including cinnamon and stir until everything is well distributed. Add oil first and then liquid sweetener, and stir until well combined.

Pour out onto a large rimmed cookie sheet and place in oven. Bake for a total of about 20 minutes, stirring several times during the cooking to prevent burning and promote even browning. I used to stir every 5 minutes but found I can bake it in 3 bursts of 7 minutes instead. Try it on the cautious side to see how your oven behaves. You don’t want to burn it!

Some notes: I never worry about the “ratio” of dry ingredients to oil and sweetener. No matter how much or little I add, it always turns out. Also, see how I’ve cleverly changed the recipe to use only one dry measuring cup. If you measure the oil first, and put the liquid sweetener into the same un-rinsed cup, it just slides right out! Oh, and my favourite version has been with the cheap fake 15% maple syrup pancake syrup! I’ve never done a cost analysis of this, but it seems to me that it is cheaper than the store-bought variety. In any case it is better and healthier, and pretty easy to whip up if you need a quick treat. I eat mine with raisins and milk, but dried cranberries are also delicious! Vegan if made with anything but honey.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I mentioned a few posts ago that I didn’t have a good chocolate chip cookie recipe I can rely on. This has been a sad state of affairs, as I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. I remember my neighbour making incredible chocolate chip cookies when I was really young. They were fantastic–soft, with a crisp exterior, especially magical just out of the oven on a cool fall day after running around the back yard playing freeze tag for the better part of an afternoon. I wanted a recipe like that!

I’ve finally worked out a pretty good chocolate chip cookie recipe, based on the one in Deceptively Delicious, but with a few modifications. This is the recipe I imagine my kids might miss when they move away from home. It makes nicely spreading cookies, rich with chips, and with just a little extra flavour & texture due to the 1/2 cup oats thrown in.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups chocolate chips

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter with brown sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla, scraping down the sides as needed to ensure an even mixture. Add chocolate chips and mix on low until combined. Mix dry ingredients together in a medium bowl, and add all at once to butter mixture. Mix on low until a thick dough forms, again scraping down bowl as needed.

Form balls of dough by tablespoon on a cookie sheet covered with a sheet of parchment paper. Flatten slightly. Bake until just set–do not over-cook–11 to 13 minutes.

Makes 2 dozen cookies.

As with all cookie recipes, I like to make 1 dozen of these, and freeze the other dough balls so I can have fresh cookies another day. I freeze them individually on a cookie sheet and then put them into a zip-lock baggie for longer storage. When baking cookies from frozen, reduce temperature to 325 degrees and bake for about 15 minutes.

Natural Deodorant Fail

I wrote a few months back about starting to use baking soda for deodorant. It surprised me at how well it worked, how cheap & natural it was, and how easy to apply, etc. I was totally sold on it and even started telling other people about it. It isn’t an anti-perspirant, and I would occasionally need to wash & re-apply mid-day, but overall it worked great.

That is, until my little girl developed her extra-sensitive nose. I think she has inherited it from my dad, who complains about the faintest whiff of perfume applied within 12 hours.

As you know, I’m tandem nursing her and my newborn (who is 5 weeks today–oh my!). Well, a couple weeks ago, she started the adorable habit of holding her nose when she smells something she doesn’t like. Not pinching it closed, but either hovering her hand near her nose just putting her fingers on the bridge of her nose as if to filter the smell through her fingers.

I noticed not long ago that she was doing this while nursing. Either that or stuffing her blankie between her face and my arm pit. I was confused at first but then it became clear when she told me, “I smell a smell.”

Sheesh! Well, the baking soda deodorant may work well at a distance, but not up close and personal. I really don’t want my children’s subconscious memory of nursing being suffused with the stink of mommy’s B.O.

So today I went out and bought some new deodorant. I got “unscented” but of course there’s still some perfume smell there . . . But really, I’d settle for anything rather than have my daughter hold her nose during Mokies! It’s just too depressing.

Clever, but not so deceptive

After posting about the cookbook Deceptively Delicious being the “Holy Grail” of cookbooks for moms, I actually tried a couple of the suggestions in the book. The results were mixed but edible, which is good but not great for a cookbook.

First of all, I made a couple of purees. I did acorn squash and sweet potatoes by roasting them together in the oven and then using a Moulinex food mill that my dear friend D loaned to me some time ago to mash the gunk out of them. Actually I used the blender for the Acorn squash, which was not so successful as I had to add a bunch of water before the blender would puree it, thus watering down the result. The sweet potatoes done in the mill were easy and perfect and not a drop of water was added.

The first technique I tried was adding the acorn squash pulp to boxed mac & cheese. The result? I successfully added 1/2 cup of the somewhat watered-down pulp to a box and it still tasted like mac & cheese. The down side? My girl didn’t eat much of it. But then again, she’s not eating much of anything these days (due to the mokies). But I ate it and felt virtuous for having a veggie hidden in all that starch.

I also added a half-cup of the acorn squash to the stew I made that night, and it disappeared beautifully into the broth. Success!

The second thing I tried was the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Strangely, the recipe calls for chick peas. Whole chick peas. Yeah–not so deceptive, really. My husband and daughter have been rightfully sceptical of them . . . They were pretty good right out of the oven, but after sitting around (covered, overnight), the chick peas got all dried out and hard. Not so appetizing. The other problem with them is that due to the “virtue” of being chick-pea infused, I wound up giving myself permission to eat way too many at a sitting.

So, definitely not the Holy Grail as I’d hoped, but I’m not giving up yet. I have a bunch of sweet potato puree in the freezer, so if any readers have recipes for me, fire them off! I’m also looking for a kick-ass chocolate chip cookie recipe. NOT Chocolate “Chick” cookies–never again!

Ottawa Freecycle Weekend

I’ve written before about how much I love curb shopping–a lot! I love finding useful and beautiful things in the trash and giving them a new useful life at my house.

Well, this weekend is a curb shopper’s dream come true: an “official” Ottawa Freecycle Weekend. Or as the City of Ottawa is calling it, the “Give Away Weekend“, coming at the end of Waste Reduction Week. The idea is simple: the city is encouraging people to put their unwanted items out on the curb with a “Free” sign on them, so neighbours can “shop” the streets, bringing home anything that looks appealing.

I think this is a fabulous idea: the city encouraging people to re-purpose and reduce waste. Do you curb shop? Do you have any great curb shopping triumphs to share? Does your city have an official Freecycle weekend? Let me know in the comments!

Happy curb shopping everyone

The Holy Grail of Cookbooks for Moms?

The other day I told my partner, “I just want a cookbook of really really easy recipes for super nutritious foods that kids will love.” To which he replied, “And I think it would be cool to find the Holy Grail. And maybe also the Philosopher’s Stone. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. We could use them as bookends . . . ” And I finished “. . . to put on either side of ‘The Cookbook’.”

We’re a hilarious comedy duo; you should check us out some time.

Well the next day, I went to the library where I spotted this cookbook I’ve noticed a bunch of times before and completely dismissed as pretty but not at all interesting to me. This time was different. This time, it was ‘The Cookbook’ I’ve been longing for!

It’s called Deceptively Delicious, a well-designed book of recipes written by Jerry Seinfeld’s wife Jennifer. And while I haven’t actually *tried* any of the recipes in the book (I have much more time for reading than I do for cooking these days, and even that means like 20 minutes a day!), the concept is absolutely brilliant in its simplicity!

And what is this amazing revolutionary concept you ask? Simply this: puree vegetables and fruits and add them to everything. Any recipe you can think of can probably take an extra quarter- to half-cup of fruit or veggie puree. Brilliant! Now you can get your kids to “eat their veggies” without the begging, bribing or cajoling.

The book has some great strategies: First of all, do a bunch of purees at the beginning of the week, portion them in ziplocks and stick them in the freezer for use later in the week. That way you can build up a stock of different veggie purees, for use where they make sense.

Then you simply thaw a puree when you need it. Cooking strategies include: Mixing veggie puree with the egg for breadcrumb coatings (chicken nuggets, tofu nuggets, mozzarella sticks). Using sweet veggies like squash, sweet potato and carrots added into sweet breakfast items and baked things. Matching colours to add yellow veggies secretly to carb dishes like couscous or “buttered” noodles, orange veggies like carrots to cheese sauce or cauliflower puree to potatoes.

So, while I haven’t yet tried any recipes, I got my partner to pick up a squash, a cauliflower, some sweet potatoes and some frozen spinach at the grocery store today. If I get some time tonight I’m going to roast a bunch of stuff for pureeing very soon.

I will update you on the success of this trickery. In any case I’m hoping to increase my own veggie intake. While my daughter has been fattening up on mama’s suddenly abundant milk supply (and foregoing most food while she’s at it), my own diet has been distinctly lacking in anything fresh and colourful lately. So anything that allows me to quickly and easily add veggies where there were none before, is a great, great thing. Maybe even the Holy Grail.